The Green Horizon
by Evil Riggs
Summary: Outsider Linus Olsen navigates an increasingly alien Hyrule. As war approaches from the north, he must adapt or die. Part II of The Legend of Zelda: Shadow Dawn. Rated M for drugs, coitus, cursing, and the old ultraviolence.
1. 1

**THE LEGEND OF ZELDA:  
SHADOW DAWN**

**Foreword**

_This is the first of a very sparse number of author's notes that I intend to place at the beginning of each Part of _The Legend of Zelda: Shadow Dawn.

_If you're new to the story, let it be known that you're starting in the middle of things. I encourage you to click on my profile and open _The Amber Twilight_, which contains Part I of the story. Don't worry. It won't bite. You can also just keep reading, and allow your inevitable intrigued confusion to guide you back down that suggested path._

_If you must forge ahead right now, keep in mind that this tale isn't really about _The Legend of Zelda. _Except that it is – and there's the rub. Part I – "The Amber Twilight" – concerns Linus Olsen, a stoner, lifelong _Legend of Zelda_ fan, and resident of the storied city of Los Angeles. Linus is not a happy man. Consumed by a sense of hopeless inertia and growing depression, he wiles his days away with an empty job, cheap drugs, and video games. After a show of drunken bravado leaves him bruised and even more depressed than usual, Linus wakes up in hellish dream world of endless forests, lunatic beasts, and haunted ruins. Only after escaping to the waking world does Linus realize that these incredible dreams have put him into possession of the fabled, entirely fictional Master Sword_.

_The sword's arrival heralds a period of paranoia and dread for Linus. Convinced that increasingly terrifying hallucinations are being caused by this impossible sword, Linus sets out to get rid of it. Even that quest goes awry, as once again Linus steps headlong into an all-too-familiar fantasy world. Now, Linus sits in the aftermath of a great battle – one that he's won by using only his wits and the damnable Master Sword. It's a long way to Los Angeles, and it doesn't look like there's any going back._

_Before we begin, let me thank all of the diehard fans who have put up with my lugubrious pacing and infuriatingly lazy update schedule – especially those who have hung on from the beginning. Your enthusiasm and support have buoyed me as I undertook this madly overambitious project. Thank you._

* * *

**PART II:  
THE GREEN HORIZON**

**1**

This is how the world ended:

Not with a bang, and not with a whimper.

Oh sure, there was some blubbering involved on my part. And if you want to get technical, a brawl with otherworldly monsters might count as a "bang." All the same, the world – _my _world, and all the things in it –did not truly end with those things.

No.

My world ended on a bed of grass, while I stared into the blue, blue sky.

I was Linus Aaron Olsen, and I had gone insane. My body buzzed with the fading memory of adrenaline. My face was on fire. Tears flowed into an open wound on my cheek and mixed, stinging, with my blood. A streamer of runny snot trickled from a nostril and pooled over my upper lip.

I'm not as good with dates as I used to be. The past can sometimes blur together in a single brushstroke of images layered upon one another. But, as far as I can tell, the date was August 22, 2007. Or was it the 23rd? Truth be told, the old days – those days before the sky spilled out over me like a peerless seascape – seem just as unreal as everything that came after them. The concept of dates and years has turned elastic in my mind. Sometimes I wonder if it wasn't 2008 or 2009 when I stepped into the yawning alleyway and abandoned my old life forever. Like the moments just after waking from a disturbingly vivid dream, what was real and what was an amorphous fantasy blend together in a storm of whimsy and confusion.

And _that_ . . . that was how my world actually ended. It ended like waking from a dream. A dream in which I was Linus Olsen, born in St. Paul, Minnesota and raised in Los Angeles, California. A dream of empty streets and hollow lives; of endless wandering and slow emotional decay. It was a dream that I had believed was immutable. And now – as I lay bloody, bruised, and full of mad joy – I couldn't help but wonder if all that had been some bizarre lie. Had I been dreaming? Had I dreamed everything about my life to that point? Was everything that I believed in an illusion?

And what had I wakened to?

I was Linus Olsen, and if I hadn't already gone insane, the questions that spun through my mind would eventually take me there.

And so I lay in the tall grass of a great and windswept prairie. I hurt. Face, shoulders, ribs, abdomen, legs, feet . . . Everything hurt. I tried to focus on the part that pained me the most, but it didn't work. My brain swarmed with static. I couldn't focus. I had been sitting up, hadn't I? Yes, that would make sense. And now I was on my back, eyes to the few clouds tracing faint paths across the sky. I didn't _remember_ falling backwards. Curious.

How much time had passed, then? I squinted. The laceration on my face filled with magma. My breath hissed through clenched teeth. A numb tingle spread across my lips and the tip of my nose.

The sky. The sky was _momentous_. So blue. What was a good word for it? What was a good word for "blue?" I blinked. Azure? Yes. Azure might do. Sapphire. That sky was fucking _sapphire._ When was the last time I had seen a sky so clean and pretty? God, what a question. When was the last time I had been out of the city?

I frowned and furrowed my brow. The movement called forth another rush of raw pain from my cheek.

All about me, blades of grass tickled my hands and explored between my spread fingers. Beneath the back of my head, the ground felt cool and just barely moist. The wind picked up, and my view was obscured by swaying fronds of greenery.

Out in the shady depths of the meadow, insects clicked and buzzed as if in soft conversation.

_Swish. Swish._

I heard movement. Grass parting as someone – or something – moved through it. It was joined by hushed voices, muted at first and then rising to an excited babble. I couldn't make out any of the words. Slowly and by turns, I caught pieces of a harried, approaching conversation.

". . . don't know. Just do not – ah, my head!"

A low, nasal male voice, with an accent thick as porridge. Long and lyrical vowels.

"Father, he –"

"Oh, my _skull_ . . ."

"He saved us. He fought 'em off himself!"

The second voice belonged to a girl. _The _girl, probably. The one that, for better or worse, had gotten me into this mess. A stiff smile crossed my lips. All this for a girl I hadn't even seen face to face. Bravo, Don Quixote.

A third distinct voice sluiced past my ears. "Don't like it. Don't like it _at all_. Fellow had a queer way about him." Rough and blunt and growling. Even though the accent wasn't _quite _Irish or _quite _English, that third man's vocal pattern brought to mind dark pubs, rainy days, and mugs of . . . mugs of . . . what the fuck did Irishmen drink? Guinness?

Jesus, the places my mind wandered. When it came back to that strange lilting accent, I realized that it wasn't quite like _anything_ I had heard before. It was a limbo-speech, familiar but undeniably foreign.

"Easy, man. He's probably a soldier away from his garrison, or one of those, you know, 'contractuals,' come up from Great Bay to make himself a few rupees." The owner of the first voice had evidently stopped moving, as his words didn't come noticeably closer.

The third man spat audibly. "Bloody godsdamn mercenary scum. In times past, they'd get what came to 'em, eh? _Really_ came to 'em, right? Pissing buzzards, the lot of them. Why ol' Daphnes hasn't issued a decree o' conscription . . ."

"Now, now . . ." the first voice sighed.

With further parting of the grass, the girl whispered, "Does it matter? If he hadn't come along, what do you think would have happened to us?" I felt the stalks just beyond my feet begin to stir. "Do you think he's dead?"

"You said that he took a mob spear to the face?" the first man asked. His voice was full of pained incredulity.

"That's what I saw," the girl chirped. She couldn't have been more than ten feet away.

I managed to turn my head. To my right, the thin rays of the sun played through shoots of grass and dappled the blade of the Master Sword. When I got down to it, it hadn't been the girl at all that was the root of my problems. It was that damnable sword. Ever since I had found it, my life had become a nightmare carnival ride. With it, I had cut away the dream of Los Angeles and woken up in the hills of –

Don't say it. Don't even _think _it. It's ridiculous.

My eyes moved back to the immaculate sky. A grimace pulled at my lips.

The third, unseen man chuffed, "Ingo could have handled it. Ingo took the shanks to that rider, didn't he?"

I felt a gut-twisting sense of sour déjà vu. Must have misheard. Had to have. My unacknowledged assumptions were getting in the way of my senses. Completely ridiculous.

Waking. Waking from a dream, to a dream.

I realized that I couldn't just lie there for much longer. As terrible and exhausted as I felt, I was far from unconscious. These people (whoever they were) were looking for me. They probably wanted answers. One of them was less than a hop from the tips of my shoes.

"Ooooh – my head!" the first man moaned. "Can you see him, dear?"

I clenched my eyes shut and attempted to rise. Pain rippled through my body – torn flesh, bruised skin, cracked ribs, and knotted muscles. Despite everything, I succeeded in sitting up.

The vision of that wonderful, world-ending sky blurred into a haze of green. A dizzy rush overtook my head. The colors of the world bled together. For a moment, I saw everything as a series of blurred shapes, lines, and shadows.

Out in the field, a squat figure jumped back and raised its arms in defense. "Yikes!" he shouted. At least, I _thought _he shouted that – it was pronounced more like _yoikz_.

A slim silhouette bent forward to inspect me. Blue eyes ran over my form with wide curiosity.

"Are you all right, stranger?"

Her voice was soft and concerned. As my eyes adjusted and my head cleared, the light caught her red hair. Fire, paprika, garnets, blood.

She was young, but ambiguously so. Short and petite, with a round and lineless face. Freckles dotted her cheekbones. At this angle, I had a full and unapologetic view of her small breasts as they pressed against the fabric of her dress.

Something about that dress gave me pause. It was a one-piece, practical garment stitched from a white, heavy material. On its sleeves, shoulders, and hem were embroidered bright blue, angular designs. Something . . . something familiar . . .

"Stranger?" she asked again, leaning closer. The girl absently brushed loose strands of long hair away from her neck. Only a very small, diminishing part of me was surprised to see that her ears curved back into high elfin points.

After a long moment, I realized that I was staring. Christ. I shook my head and my vision swam like a soaked watercolor. "I'm okay," I groaned.

The girl cocked her head to the side and screwed up her forehead in confusion. "O-kay? Is that," she paused, "is that your name? Oh-Kay?" Her accent was the same as the others'. Her lips seemed to draw every vowel out like a tiny song.

"I mean," I said, my voice raspy, "that I am . . . I'm o –" she doesn't know that word, jackass, "I'm all right. I'm g-good."

She stood full height, giving me a better view of the meadow and the two other figures standing behind her. Placing her hands on her hips, she looked down at me with an expression that was part incredulity and part bemusement. "You don't look all right, mister. You look like something a cat drug home in the morning."

I couldn't help but smile. I broke eye contact with the redhead and looked past her, to the two men standing some yards off amidst the grass. Each of them gazed in my direction as if studying a particularly venomous insect.

One of them was a plump, middle-aged guy wearing a gray tunic and a visible sheen of sweat. He had a round, flushed face like an under-ripe tomato. A bird's nest of thick brown hair surrounded the smooth dome of a bald pate. Dark, worried eyes and an upper lip dominated by a bristling push-broom mustache. A small gash stood out on one of his temples, caked with drying blood. It came to me that this must have been the man that I startled when I woke up. As he watched me, he wrung his big hands together in clear apprehension

The other was a tall, gangly fellow who glowered at me like a scarecrow. He crossed his arms over a pair of suspenders and waited, as if expecting something. Like his comrade, his face was obscured by dark facial hair – iron-streaked sideburns that careened down the side of his face and blended into an impressive mutton chop mustache. He looked as if he had just stepped out of some silvery-gray photograph taken in the 1800s. One of those presidents whose names I could never remember.

Both men had ears exactly like the girl's. Long, slung back, and sharply tapered.

The girl was still looking at me with that awkward mix of curiosity and pity. Suddenly, her expression vanished. Her eyes grew as wide as I had first seen them, back when she had been hiding from raiders beneath a wagon. Realization dawned in them. Her teeth appeared in a delighted smile.

"You have round ears!" she laughed. "You have round ears! I never thought – oh! Let me help you up – please!" The girl swept down and grasped my wrist. Her fingers were calloused and her grip was surprisingly strong.

"What?" I sputtered. "I, uh."

She hauled up with a force that belied her pixie frame. The sudden movement pulled the muscles in my shoulder and seemed to spill acid across my ribs. I winced. No time to waste an opportunity, though. Using her overeager gesture as leverage, I flexed my legs and stood up. Another nauseous moment of disorientation slammed though my head. My entire skull seemed to toll like an obscene bell.

Taking a step back, the girl giggled excitedly. "I always heard stories, but I never thought I'd see one – much less meet one." She grinned. It was a warm, guileless expression. "Or be saved by one!"

"Dear, is everything all right?" the stout man called out.

"Yes, father! Better than all right! Look! He has round ears! He must be an outerlander!"

Up this close, I couldn't help but see the smudges of dirt and grass on the girl's dress. Sweat slicked the skin of her neck and her hands trembled slightly as she talked. I noticed that her left shoulder was spackled with drying blood.

She's still in shock from the attack, I realized. Were it not for whatever it is that she's so worked up over, she might be on the edge of hysteria by now.

Were my ears really as strange to them as theirs were to me?

I swayed. My legs felt like they were shaped from wet plaster.

The plump man – this girl's father – squinted at me and ran a hand over his shining forehead. "Well," he said, "I'll be buggered! He does have round ears!" Growing a gap-toothed smile, he started walking across the meadow. "What do you say, stranger? Are you really an outerlander? I mean," his own excitement seemed to increase, "we hear stories while we're growing up, but – zounds!"

"Outerlander?" I managed. It was if I had stepped onto the stage of a surrealist farce. My brain kept trying to piece every scrap of information together, only to end up failing.

Having crossed the divide between us, the plump man sauntered up to me with a grin like a long-lost relative. "I think that we owe you our lives, mister," he said. "That was nasty business back there –"

"Yeah," I said absently.

"– and I don't think we simple ranch folk could have handled it. I'm glad to see that even a foreign boy like yourself is willing to lend a hand to a stranger in these dark times."

And at once, he shot out his left hand like a cannonball and grasped my right forearm just below the elbow. He smiled, obviously waiting.

Open-mouthed and feeling like a mongoloid, I made a snap decision. Without a further thought, I reached out my hand and took his elbow in the same manner. The material of his sleeve felt stiff, rough, and hot against my fingers. The girl's father nodded amiably and pumped my arm up and down in greeting. Apparently, I had weathered that bit of culture shock unscathed.

"Goddesses praised!" he crooned. His big eyes sparkled happily. "Who can I thank for saving me and mine?"

Dim coals seemed to flare somewhere inside my skull. Numbly, I muttered, "I, um . . . I mean. My name?"

"Oh-Kay?" the girl suggested. Her impish grin indicated that she full well knew that wasn't my name.

"No," I said. "No. I am – I mean, my name is, it, it's Linus."

The man before me never missed a beat. "Well, Linus – my name is Lon. Tash Lon." He waved a hand back to the girl. "This is my daughter, Malora. If you prefer," he winked conspiratorially, "you can use my wife's monikers – Malon and Talon!"

"Father!" The indignant tone and reddening cheeks of an embarrassed daughter.

Malon and Talon. Yes. Of course. Why not?

I laughed. I laughed out loud, harsh and staccato, and felt like I might pass out.

The fit passed quickly, and when I opened my eyes I saw Talon – _Tash, Tash_ – looking at me oddly, his smile half-melted into a frown. "Did I say something funny, stranger?"

Out past Tash Lon's shoulder, the tall man stared at me with cold eyes.

I raised a hand to my cheek and gingerly probed the edge of the spear wound. Grinding pain shot away from the spot that I poked. "No. No. Sorry. I – I just," think, dammit, "I'm just light-headed. And those names remind me of, of someone I know."

Tash's eyebrows rose quizzically. "Oh?"

"I _told _you that you don't look all right," Malon – _Malora _– said triumphantly.

I felt Tash Lon's meaty hand land on my shoulder. "You should come back to our wagon. We have plenty of supplies. A bit o' the Red and some stitches and you ought to be right as a river." That honest, infectious smile curved his features. "It's the least we can do."

Tash turned and trotted off toward the distant wagon. Suddenly, he stopped. "Oh gods," he muttered. "Where are my manners?" He swung around and indicated the third man, still standing like a judgmental statue. "This here is Ingo, my right-hand man, so to speak! Ingo, meet Linus."

Ingo nodded curtly and said, "Pleased to meet you." He unfolded like a spider and followed Tash back toward the white hulk of the wagon.

Foreboding.

"Aren't you coming?" Malora smiled.

A genuinely debilitating kind of fog had descended over me. I saw but did not really see; I heard but did not really hear; I smelled but did not really smell. Everything felt muted and detached. My skin felt cold and my tongue slid dryly against the back of my teeth.

I answered, "Yes. Just let me gather my things." The words felt like they squeaked from a doll's mouth.

"Don't dally," Malora chided. "You really do look terrible." She spun about in order to hurry after her father.

I slipped an absent hand down into the grass and picked up the Master Sword. Its presence in my fist felt strangely reassuring. Looking after Malora, I blurted, "Wait!"

She stopped and looked back over her shoulder in puzzlement.

I said, "This may . . ." I blinked with a wave of dizziness, ". . . this may sound crazy, but where am I?"

It seemed to take a moment for her to fully process the question. When she did, a sly smile perked the corners of her mouth. "Linus, is it?"

I nodded.

"You don't know? Really? I mean, you must have come through the border at some point. You must have –"

I just shook my head.

Still holding her vixen's smile, Malora said, "You're standing in the Eldin Plains, of the great Kingdom of Hyrule. Does that narrow it down enough?"

I let that soak in – as much as it could in my state – and lumbered out further into the meadow to retrieve my duffle bag. I found it a dozen yards from where I had fallen to my knees, resting in a patch of scruffy yellow wildflowers.

Hyrule. Fucking Hyrule!

I wiped gooey blood off the blade and onto a pair of boxers from the bag. I regarded the gobs of congealing plasma on the underwear's fabric, and then tossed the ruined garment behind me in disgust. As if tucking in a child, I carefully slipped the sword into the duffle, zipped it shut, and hefted it over a shoulder.

Malora watched the entire operation in silence. When I was done, she waved and took off toward the wagon with a bounce in her stride.

I followed, tracing Malora's playfully bobbing steps. As I did, I couldn't help but wonder: Was I the dreamer, or the dreamed?


	2. 2

**2**

As I approached, I realized that the wagon was much larger than it had first appeared. The roof curved in a smooth arc whose apex was about twelve feet in the air. The spokes of the solid wheels were as thick as my thigh and connected into inner bands of iron or steel. Despite its welcoming eggshell walls, the vehicle was something of an imposing presence as it squatted upon the prairie.

Malora gestured for me to hurry up. Her bounding steps paused only a moment, and then she disappeared round the back corner of the wagon.

Docile as a lamb, I followed.

On the left side of the wagon, Tash and Ingo busied themselves with a variety of tasks. Ingo stood next to one of the pack beasts, stroking its gray hair and murmuring soothing, rumbly words into its ear. As I came about, he eyed me with the same suspicious slit-eyed apprehension as before. Meanwhile, Tash leaned forward into a dark space that opened into the unblemished white of the wagon wall, just behind the animal hitch. I realized that it must be some kind of cabinet or storage compartment, set away from the rest of the wagon's interior space. Tash rummaged about the locker with meaty arms, sorting through unseen doodads and thingamajigs.

I have to admit that, at this point, I was more or less incapable of critical thought. My limbs moved and my muscles flexed. I took in the varied sights about and within the Lon wagon, tasting the warm air and listening to the excited words of my benefactors. I understood everything. However, I considered none of it more deeply than its surface meaning. Pain and exhaustion had tossed a shroud over me that made my conscious moments at best functional. I was a meat machine, operating at a purely basic capacity.

"Surely you've heard of Hyrule?" Malora asked cheerily. She had stopped and was looking at me again, her arms folded behind her back.

"I . . . have," I managed. I felt awkward and unsure, as if what I had just said was a lie. "I just . . . just didn't . . ."

She leaned forward a bit. The gesture felt impish, even mocking. "Just didn't what?"

"Confound it!"

Malora pivoted on her heels. "What is it?"

Behind her, Tash stood back from the open storage space with his hands on his hips. He gestured at the cabinet in a display of feeble surrender.

Malora ambled to her father's side and wrinkled her brow in consternation. "Oh!" she sighed. "I arranged all this before we departed, father. You're just jumbling everything!" She darted in between Tash and the wagon. Ducking into the open square of the locker, she snatched three objects from within its interior. With the appointed items bunched up in her arms, Malora wheeled about and nodded at me decisively. "Sit," she commanded.

Forgotten, Tash gave his daughter a pained look. He blindly swung out a hand and closed the storage locker.

I sat down cross-legged at the base of one of the immense wheels and waited. The rich, sharp scent of crushed grass wafted up my nostrils. The duffle bag rested at my side like a loyal terrier.

Ingo moved to reassure the next animal in the hitch, trailing soft gruff whispers in his wake. Curious observation: He limped slightly as he walked, his right leg trailing the left by half a stride. Odd.

Malora flopped onto the grass before me, stirring the flight of some panic-stricken insect. Its spindle-gold form sailed past me and into the green aether. After smoothing out the hems of her dress, Malora carefully set each of the objects out in front of her: A soft leather pouch or purse, a plain wooden box, and a glass bottle filled with murky brown liquid and stopped with an uneven cork. She thought for a moment, tracing the edge of the bottle with a finger, and then handed it to me.

"Take a swig o' this," she drawled.

The thick glass was cool to the touch. "What is it?" I asked.

Tash passed through my peripheral vision like a round phantom. "Just somethin' to take your mind off the pain," he said. "I'm goin' to go help Ingo." He wandered out of sight.

I plucked the cork from the bottle and peered down its neck. As I did, an overmastering scent rushed from within and walloped me in the nose. Alcohol. Strong, dark alcohol. It almost stung the eyes just to get a better look at the coffee-colored booze swirling about the inside of the bottle.

Drawing back slightly, I looked to Malora for confirmation that this was indeed what she wanted me to drink, and then lifted the mouth of the bottle to my lips.

It struck my tongue like a mad bull and stampeded down the back of my throat, where it burned beautifully. Under the overwhelming antiseptic taste of high-proof liquor was something like smoke and toffee. A mixture of bourbon, scotch, and the sort of thing one might slip into the punch to get freshman girls drunk.

I sputtered; Malora smiled. "Father brews it a bit strong, eh?"

"He makes that shit himself?" I coughed. I could already feel a flush rise in my cheeks. The tender skin and exposed, bleeding muscle of the spear wound tingled ever so slightly. Despite my rough appraisal of the stuff, I took another wincing sip of it.

Frowning, Malora said, "Yes. It's one of his . . . hobbies, I suppose?" She shrugged, working at tiny leather knots that closed the purse. "As if running the biggest ranch in the south provinces wasn't enough for him. I swear, sometimes I think he takes on all these things just so he can forget about half of them."

I nodded, hearing the words without comprehending a one of them. As I took another dainty sip of liquor, I rolled my stiff neck and glanced back up the wagon wall. Interesting – something was written up near the top of the wagon, precise black in a nebulous field of white.

_Something_. I squinted. Couldn't quite . . . Aw, fuck. Of course I couldn't read it. I didn't recognize a single one of the letters. Drawn in connected geometric patterns, each character was a riddle. Strange hieroglyphs, as alien and incomprehensible as Arabic or Korean.

I pointed at them. "What does that say?" I asked idly.

Malora looked up from her lap. "What?" Blue irises traced the invisible ray projected by my finger. Somewhat surprised: "Oh!" Her eyes returned to my face. "You can't read?"

Can I read? Of course I can. Jesus, what a question!

I forced my frantic thoughts to slow. Yes, I could read. Just not . . . just not . . . _Hylian_. Not this Bizarro World language, spelled out in tight clusters of lines that looked like cracked mosaics. What to tell her, then? Did I dare muddy the waters any further than they already were? I could barely string together a coherent sentence, let alone explain differences between alphabets that had, up until recently, been purely fictional.

After a long pause, I shook my head.

Never missing a beat, Malora opened the last of the purse strings and continued talking. "It's nothing to be ashamed of, you know. I know plenty o' folk who don't know how to read. I probably only know how on account of father sending my sisters and I to grammar school in Hylium." Her quick eyes darted from me to the painted words, and then back to the open purse and the items that now emerged from it. "It says 'Lon Ranch and World-Famous Dairy.' I don't suppose that you've heard of us, being an outerlander and all?"

I laughed. It was a bleak, involuntary sound. "Actually," I grinned, "I have."

"Really?!" Her eyes lit up, almost electric. Only a moment later, her expression changed to one of unchecked confusion. "But . . . If you didn't know that you were in Hyrule . . ."

Oh God – I didn't have nearly the brainpower to struggle through this conversation. Not now. I slapped the cork back into the neck of the bottle, my stomach already curdling with the raw power of the booze. "Do you want to know a secret?" I asked.

Malora never took her eyes off me as she nodded somberly. Her hands worked a bit of dark thread through the eye of a fine silver needle.

"I don't actually know how I got here," I admitted. "To Hyrule, I mean."

The needle and thread danced between Malora's fingers. "How is that possible?" she asked. Without warning, she swept her face down and bit off the end of the thread. "You seem set for travel, though your manner and clothing are odd . . . and, and you didn't know . . ." Her eyes widened. "Is it magic? Were you spirited here by some hex or spell?"

Fuck if I knew. I sighed, "I don't know." Sensing her obvious disappointment, I added, "It's probable."

Nodding, Malora grabbed the bottle of homemade liquor and deftly pulled out the cork with her teeth. She gathered up a gray cloth from the pile of things on her lap and poured a bit of alcohol onto it. "Do you know any wizards in your home country? This is going to sting." She dabbed my wound gingerly with the liquor-soaked rag. It did indeed sting. "I hear wizards are a hot-tempered sort. 'Course out in the provinces we don't see many o' those types. They mostly keep to the guilds and manufactories, from what I hear." She looked into my eyes, seemed to realize that she was rambling, and blushed slightly. "I'm gonna sew up this gash on your face now. Are you ready?"

A moment's hesitation later, I nodded.

"Good. Now, hold still."

Malora worked quickly, threading the needle in and out of my ruptured flesh. I winced with every stinging bite of delicate silver. The tingling after-effects of the liquor helped with some of the pain, but most of it I had to just endure. I opened my eyes at intervals and watched lines of intense concentration run across Malora's otherwise smooth cheeks. Out past her arched body, I saw Tash and Ingo wandering through the meadow, inspecting hidden sights and speaking in hurried, hushed tones. Both glanced back at me often, their faces troubled masks. As my eyes opened and closed with the flash of each pinprick, I only caught glimpses of them as they trundled about their nervous business.

"There," Malora breathed. I felt a final, decisive tug as she tied off the end of the final stitch. "Now for a bit o' the Red . . ."

When I opened my eyes again, I found Malora removing the lid of the wooden box resting at her knees. Inside, revealed like rubies, were delicate glass vials wrapped in what looked like brown velvet. Each vial contained a brilliant red liquid, brighter than blood and almost glowing in the midday sun. Malora carefully removed one of them and handed it to me. "Drink this. You'll be whole again in no time!" She grinned.

I held the vial up to the light and examined the substance inside. Up this close, it swirled and shimmered, bands of lighter color rippling through it like captured magma. Red potion. Why not?

I removed the tiny cork atop the vial and emptied its contents into my mouth. Cool, viscous, and vaguely cloying. The rotting-sweet taste slid like cooking oil past the back of my tongue and lingered there, as if its source had not already drizzled down my throat. It turned bitter at the edges.

Almost immediately, my stomach turned over. For a horrible moment, I thought that I might vomit the elixir back up and onto Malora's dress. My guts constricted; a cramp like a clenched fist thudded against my bellybutton; I felt flush and faint and winded. I clutched my sides and felt nausea pass through me like a cloud drifting over the sun.

And before I knew it, everything passed. Gasping for air, feeling sweat trickle across my brow, I looked to Malora.

She was already gathering the medical sundries back into their respective containers. "Have you never had the Red before?" she asked casually.

"No," I sputtered. "Does it . . . always do that?"

Malora stood up, the supplies gathered under one arm. She offered me her hand. "Not always. It's worse when you don't have any food in your belly. And it's always a bit frightening the first time."

Feeling naïve and helpless, I took Malora's hand and hauled myself to my feet. "And it will help my wound heal?"

"You _must _be an outerlander," Malora said.

"What?" A bit flustered, I asked, "Why is that?"

Malora wandered to the storage locker and went about placing the supplies back in it. "There's so much you don't seem to know. You dress and talk and even _act _so differently. You wear your hair like a girl," (and at this, I self-consciously plucked a blonde strand from my forehead), "use words so rough that even Ingo won't say 'em, and . . ." She trailed off. "I apologize if I'm offending you," she murmured. She closed the door and turned to me, looking sheepish.

I shook my head. "It's all right." I opened my mouth to say something more – anything, really – and realized that I had no idea what.

The breeze flowed over us and splashed against the wagon. Malora's dress rippled up about her legs. I saw that she was wearing leather sandals. An awkward silence descended.

"All finished?" Blessedly, the blunt nasal voice of Tash Lon interceded. He blundered in from the meadow, swinging his arms as if satisfied by a job well done.

Relieved, Malora said, "Yes, father." She perked up suddenly, hopped over to Tash, and handed him something. "Here. For your head."

"Aw, it ain't that bad . . ."

I saw then that Malora had given him one of the bottles of red potion. He palmed it with a look of pained embarrassment. I noticed that, sometime in the interval of Malora's palliative care, Tash had cleaned the clotted blood from the gash on his head. Without its stippled patina of red and black, the wound didn't seem nearly so awful as it had first appeared.

"Just take it, Father. You'll be cross later if you don't," Malora huffed.

Though he still looked put-upon, Tash unstopped the vial and downed the red liquid with all the fanfare of taking an aspirin. He smiled weakly and handed his daughter the empty vial.

"Right!" Tash ambled over and clapped me on the shoulder. "Well, that's that, then! On to new business. Where are you headed, Linus?"

Like everything else, I had not taken even a moment to consider this question. The logical answer was "home." And yet, it wasn't logical at all, was it? "Home" was to Hyrule as Kansas was to Oz; there were no simple doors or highways to connect the two. To even think as much was innate lunacy. And hadn't I, just minutes ago, wondered if "home" – Los Angeles – had even existed in the first place? Where was I headed, indeed? I felt like lying down in the grass and never getting back up again.

"I don't know," I managed. Way to aim low, Linus. "I'm not very familiar with this country."

Bullshit. I knew it in and out. I knew it like the hairs speckling the back of my hand.

"He thinks that he may have been brought here by magic," Malora interjected.

Tash nodded solemnly. "Bad business, that. I'm sorry to hear it. But," he sighed, "it's not surprising given the state of the world."

"He could come with us a ways," Malora suggested. "Until he has his bearings?"

Tash's great forehead wrinkled up in thought as he savored the idea. "That's not a bad idea," he said. Absent fingers rose and stroked his chin. "We could take you as far as Oloro Town, if you like. And if you really wanted to, you could travel with us to Hylium. We're headed there on business."

Oloro? Hylium? That previous certainty in my knowledge of the surroundings vanished. "Th-that would be nice," I croaked. Once again, I felt light-headed. Idiotically, I asked, "What business is that?"

"Why, the milk business!" Tash beamed. "You gaze upon the proud owner and operator of the world-famous Lon Ranch and Dairy! We're on our way to Hylium to deliver our wares to market." An even brighter light sparkled into Tash Lon's eyes. "Come – let me show you." He took off past me and headed for the back of the wagon.

Fascinated, I followed.

As he walked, Tash spoke. "We set out just this morning – the ranch ain't far from here at all. We weren't in any rush, so I thought it might be nice to pull off the road and come out here for a bit of a picnic. Didn't want to waste such a beautiful day."

We reached the end of the wagon. When I had passed by it before, I hadn't noticed that it was dominated by a pair of huge doors with iron hinges and handles. Tash clambered up onto a short platform and took hold of each handle.

"O' course, those rough bastards set on us right after we were done eating. Bashed me good with one of their clubs and set to scarin' the tar outta my Malon. Probably would have stolen everything they could carry if you hadn't happened along." He gave me a pensive look. "They would have killed us too, I reckon."

Tash turned the handles and hauled backwards, opening the heavy doors. A stream of frigid air flowed out to greet us. I climbed up beside him and peered inside.

The compartment inside the wagon was wide, deep, and cool as a winter evening. Set amongst the space were tall iron racks, piled high with pearl-shimmering bottles. Rivets like railroad spikes connected each black metal structure solidly to the interior walls of the wagon. Each bottle sat frosty and secure, a precious cylinder of milk trapped within. Even with the bright afternoon light pouring over my shoulders, I couldn't see the end of the compartment. The racks simply continued on until they were obscured by a vaguely misty darkness.

Truth be told, I was fairly impressed. "There have to be hundreds of bottles here!" I murmured.

"About five hundred, actually," Tash said. "And not just milk! Oh no! Buttermilk, sweet cream, sour cream, and even a couple rounds o' Eldin cheese in the back!" He spoke with obvious pride. "Usually I send Ingo and one o' the hands up north to put all this to market, but I have some other matters to attend to in Hylium as well."

Something itched at the back of my mind. Before I knew what it was, my lips voiced it. "How do you keep it so cold?" I asked. Of course. It wasn't like he had a refrigeration unit chugging in the back of a goddamn wagon.

"Ah, the wonders o' the modern age," Tash smiled. He pointed up, to one of the corners where the walls met the ceiling.

In each corner was a round iron construction that resembled a small brazier. They were bracketed into the wall and appeared to lock tightly around their cargo: A glass orb about the size of a softball. At the top of each sphere was a thin, delicate stem that spread out into a shape resembling an open flower. Patched with white frost, the glass glistened like a diamond caught in the sun. On closer inspection, it came to me that these orbs were in fact bottles, filled with some distant silvery-blue liquid. Tendrils of a fine mist tumbled down from the open neck of each bottle and dispersed like fog throughout the compartment.

"What is it?" I asked. Irrational fear and awe tinged my voice.

"An alchemic potion. They seal it in those flasks with a wax stopper, and when you take the stopper out, that there liquid slowly sucks all the heat out of the air around it." Tash pointed to the fragile necks of each bottle. "Once you uncork these lovelies, they can keep a space like this nice n' cool for weeks at a time. It used to be that I couldn't sell milk much farther than the next town down the road. Now that the Alchemic Revolution's givin' us wonders like these, I can keep my wares for a full trip all the way to Hylium!" He chuckled. "Hells, I could probably truck 'em up to Kakariko if I wanted to. Buuuut with the war on and all . . ." He made a strange, open-palmed gesture that I assumed meant something along the lines of, _Well, you know how it is._

I did not. I nodded anyway.

Stepping further into the cold confines of the wagon's interior, I approached one of the round bottles. I could just barely make out the elixir inside it, rippling and pulsing as soft frozen vapor poured from above. Slowly, I reached out a curious hand to caress the fascinating winter surface of the bottle.

A great mass, moving swiftly.

Tash leapt forward and grasped my wrist. "Don't touch that!" he shouted. After an awkward moment, he let go of my hand and I withdrew it gingerly. His tone softened. "Once they're opened, those flasks are right dangerous until they run their course. Takes about a week or two, depending on the size of it. I once saw a fellow – one o' the hands I hire each spring – try to grasp one of 'em before the cold had worn off." Tash sniffed the icy air. "He lost two fingers and was lucky to keep the rest. I watched 'em snap off like buggering icicles."

Not needing any verification of Tash's story, I withdrew even farther.

A voice – Malora's – came from behind us. "Are you two done?"

Tash and I turned almost simultaneously. His daughter stood in a patch of knee-high grass, arms folded and expression impassive. At her side, Ingo looked up at the back of the wagon as if he were examining shit smeared across the bottom of his boot.

I felt an ugly chill roll down my spine.

Ingo grumbled, "The oxen are back in sorts and the hitch is up to snuff. What now, boss?"

Tash blinked, as if he hadn't really considered it. "Suppose it's time to get back on the road?"

A cloud passed over the sun. Dim gray twilight filled the meadow.

Ingo stroked a hand through his thick, graying hair. "Ingo don't know. We've lost some time. Probably won't make the highway by nightfall."

"Didn't really expect to in the first place," Tash said. He stretched lazily, pulling his arms above his wide shoulders.

A look of worry crossed Ingo's brow. "Are you certain that you want to travel?" he chuffed. "The raiders may yet come back for us."

"Nay," Tash smiled. "They're a cowardly lot. After bein' humiliated like that, I doubt that they'll try to interfere with us again."

I remembered Karrik's promise of reprisal. The memory of his bared teeth made me uneasy. Perhaps not, Tash. Perhaps not.

Malora seemed to sink down into herself at the memory of the moblins. "Are you certain, father? Perhaps we should," she swallowed dryly, "we should go back to the ranch. It's not far south of here. What if they decide to go there?"

The wagon shifted noticeably as Tash leapt down. "Oh, Malon dear . . ."

"_Father_." Weakly. Her voice was small and not at all convincing.

"Malora. They wouldn't dare attack the ranch. This is the farthest south _anyone _has seen them." He cupped a gentle hand over Malora's shoulder, covering the bloodstain setting into her dress. "And they're cowards. They might try to rob three travelers, but I doubt they have the stones to raid a ranch with over twenty hands in the bunkhouses." Quietly, he said, "Your mother and sisters will be safe."

Malora looked suddenly childish, standing there while her father tried to comfort her. She seemed to know it, too – along with her naked anxiety, her freckled cheeks had grown a molten, embarrassed red. A rush of pity filled me. Climbing down off the back of the wagon, I wondered if this was the first time Malora had seen violence of this sort.

"So. Do we pack and head for the highway, then?" Ingo asked. Half-concealed skepticism ran through his smoker's voice.

Tash nodded. "Let's leave as soon as possible."

"What about that mob rotter? Mind if Ingo takes a souvenir, maybe collect on the bounty?"

Wrinkling his nose in disgust, Tash grumbled, "Must you?"

Ingo smiled. It was an unnerving, jagged spread of brown and yellow teeth. One of his front incisors shone a dull gold. "C'mon, boss. Let Ingo have this one. A few extra rupees never hurt a fellow."

"Oh, if you must," Tash said, sounding wounded. "Just be quick about it."

Wait. What was he talking about? I twitched, then blurted, "Do you mean the moblins? Did you kill one of them?" Epiphany. "That was you, wasn't it?! With the rock."

Ingo rolled his eyes contemptuously. "O' course it was. Ingo knows how to handle himself when it comes to the snouts. Knocked the bugger off his growler and then gave him what was coming to him." He raised a thumb and drew it slowly across his throat, grinning as he did.

Skin crawling, I asked, "W-where is he?"

Ingo turned and limped further out into the meadow. "C'mon. Ingo'll show you."

My feet moved before I could even consider pursuing. Behind me, I heard Tash say, "Right then! We'll just pack it in while you, er, _attend _to that. Come dear . . ."

It was a short walk. Ingo stopped and placed his hands on his hips, gazing down in consideration.

The moblin lay deep in the grass, his long hair cascading out black on green. His sunken eyes glazed up at the sky, half-lidded and still wet. A shimmering green and black insect landed on one of the exposed eyeballs, turned a full and considerate circle, and then was gone.

Soaking splatters and spills of red surrounded him, draining away from a slice across his thick neck. It seemed very quick, clean, and professional. The kind of cut a butcher might make.

I should have felt something then as I stared at the creature that I had helped kill. Perhaps the rise of my gorge; perhaps an opening well of gray remorse. Instead: Nothing. Almost nothing. A tiny, unidentifiable pang in the folds of my guts. It passed.

A flash of silver: Suddenly, a short sharp knife stood in Ingo's lithe hand. He regarded me with drawn dark eyes, then bent to the corpse lying between us. "So what are you, lad?" he asked idly. "You ain't got much skill with a sword, that's for sure. A whole mountain o' guts, by Din . . . but Ingo gets the feelin' that you don't know fightin' from fuckin' – if you'll excuse Ingo's language." He drew one of the dead moblin's ears out between a grimy thumb and forefinger. A brassy flashing ring dangled from one of its edges.

I didn't answer. I just watched, fascinated and repulsed, as he pulled the ear taut and began to saw at it with the knife. I smelled blood and wet earth, mixed like a curse. The ear made a grinding, sloppy tearing sound as Ingo carefully separated it from its owner's body. Satisfied with his work, Ingo rose with the ear still flopping between his fingers. A dribble of thick blood slid off it and spattered on Ingo's boot.

"This'll fetch Ingo ten rupees, easy," he murmured. Without another word, he strode off back to the wagon.

I spent the next minute staring blankly, numbly, thoughtlessly, at the dead thing at my feet. It was only when I heard Malora calling my name, as if from beyond some trackless veil of worlds, that I turned back to gather my bag and myself for departure.


	3. 3

**3**

Other than the moblin raiders' horses, the oxen were easily the most normal-looking creatures I had seen since arriving in Hyrule. Despite the spiral-shell pattern of their horns, they remained simple, hoofed mammals that grunted, stank, and stared ahead with an almost forceful dullness. Their familiarity was somehow reassuring.

Stationed above their hitch was a high driver's seat, easily wide enough to accommodate two or three people. By the time I had scooped up my bag, Tash and Malora were already situated there, waiting. Ingo stood at the side of the oxen, a long whipcord stick in one hand.

My mind and body still numb, I couldn't quite apprehend what came next. I stood dumbly, blinking at motes of dust and pollen.

"Are you coming?" There was a restrained haughtiness in Malora's voice. She still looked nervous, as if the thought of moblins descending on her family's ranch still haunted her.

"Do you want me to . . . ride up there?"

Rolling blue: Malora was becoming impatient. "Of course!"

A fresh thunderclap of pain peeled through my trunk as I climbed aboard. Duller this time. A storm's passing.

I sidled up onto the seat beside Malora. She pursed her lips, but said nothing.

Reigns appeared in Tash's hands. "Well then!" he cried. "What say you, Ingo? Ready to go?"

"Aye, boss. While there's still daylight."

Tash enthusiastically whipped the reigns. "Ya, then! Ya!"

A grunt, a bellow! The oxen tossed their stout gray necks and slobber leapt from their mouths. Ingo snapped his switch at their flanks and, as they started forward, kept a surprisingly steady pace beside them. Despite his limp, he could move quickly and evenly when it was necessary.

The wagon wheels creaked and the structure above them groaned. My fingers descended and wrapped about the wooden edge of the seat. Bottles clinked against metal racks, a muffled sound like distant bells. The seat shuddered; the oxen spun their paintbrush tails; I smelled something like the wet interior of a zoo cage; Ingo coughed and swatted at come bothersome insect; we were off. After a bump-a-clump moment of rolled mole hills, the wagon moved slow but steady out of the prairie meadow.

As if to demonstrate fully that I no longer had the power of rational thought, my only observation was: I am riding on a wagon. Something about this epiphany was startling, even mind-blowing. It wrenched my guts, kneading them the same way they had the first day of college or the minutes before meeting a blind date.

"You're still a filthy mess – you know that?"

I glanced left and met Malora's disapproving gaze. A quick look down confirmed her assessment: Despite the stitches and other work, much of my face, neck, and shoulder were coated in dried or drying blood. I could feel flakes of desiccated mucus dotting my lips and cheeks. Where blood had inevitably met my shirt, the dark green had been dyed an ugly, mottled brown. Those sections sat either stiff or unpleasantly moist, slipping and scratching against my skin.

"Your clothes may be a lost cause," Malora continued, sighing. "I guess we can give 'em to a laundry in Oloro. You have more in that bag of yours?"

I nodded.

The crest of the little valley trundled past. The great sweep of the plains came fully back into view. Jade hills as far as a cloud-hazy horizon. As high as the sun sat in the sky, I couldn't tell direction at all. In Los Angeles, one could always navigate by the hills or perhaps the swell of the ocean. Here . . . Well, it should come as no surprise that I had no idea where we were headed and how the wagon would get there.

My reverie broke as something cool and wet brushed against my cheek. I twitched. Malora bent forward, applying a damp cloth to my bloodied face. A wooden canteen had conjured in her other hand. "C'mon, now," she whispered.

"No need for that," I replied.

Tash chanced a look in his daughter's direction. It was doting, proud, and full of love.

Malora wetted the cloth with a jot of the canteen, then wiped at the caked blood and sputum. By turns, the fabric grew pink, then a soggy maroon. By the time the wagon reached the apex of a short ridge, the cloth was bruised dark and I felt halfway clean and unsullied.

It was soon after that the wagon came into a lowland dotted with tiny bushes with pointed leaves. There it was: Sunk amidst a sea of watery blowing grass, the road cut a brown swath up over the hills and into the blue. It stood out like a scar in the prairie.

"Back on track, eh?" Tash happily bellowed.

"Buggerin' right!" Ingo called back.

The wagon wove between scrub patches, dove through a bank of grass that reached almost as tall as the bottom of my shoes, and rumbled onto the road. Shallow wheel ruts met formidable wheels. I jostled in my seat and wondered idiotically if I might reach under it to find a safety belt. Steadier, faster, and more evenly paced, the wagon and its four attendants rolled farther into the plains.

The afternoon seemed to wane quickly. The weather flirted with being hot, but eventually settled for cloying warmth. I sweated only slightly and wondered absently if I could expect an eventual sunburn.

My memory of the day's journey becomes a toneless blur. Tash babbled off and on, gesturing with one hand. When his speeches on herd size, fencing, feed, and milking technique elicited only monosyllabic acknowledgement from me, he talked with Malora or did his best to hold conversations with Ingo. I absorbed none of it – much to my later detriment, I suspect.

My exhaustion was absolute. Perception dimmed until I was barely conscious. The last of the adrenaline-borne vitality faded from my muscles, leaving me with the strength and energy of a sock doll. I dozed off several times. Swimming through a restless haze of non-sleep, I awoke each instance to Malora's steadying hand as it kept me from tumbling off the wagon and onto the packed dirt below.

On the third time I nodded off, I jolted awake from confusing, aborted dream-thoughts to see Ingo had traded places with Tash. The wagon rolled more slowly now. Below, Tash huffed and puffed alongside the oxen, once more cherry-red and glistening with sweat. Ingo glowered at me across Malora's hunched shoulders, muttered something, and turned back to the reigns.

My restless, minutes-long naps divided the hours into stretches locked away from all the others. Time fragmented; events congealed as if trapped in amber.

The road plunged forward before and behind us, straight and unending. Sounds came and went through a veil of profound silence: The clunking turn of the wheels; oxen grunting irritably; the breeze tickling through my hair and playing with it like the grass; whispered words that held no meaning; far-off birdsong.

Despite my trancelike state, I _did _take note of many details as we journeyed. We encountered no other travelers. Even though we must have rolled for four or five hours and covered some twenty miles, only our band made its way along the beaten path.

And yet, there _were _traces of other people on the intricate bottom of the grasslands.

Smoke rose in braided columns from over rippling hillsides. Tiny road signs popped like weeds from rock mounds, pointing down thin tracks and trails that curved away from the main road. Globular bunches of dung dotted the road in varieties ranging from dry, crumbling browns to wet, fibrous greens. When I looked upon the latter, I couldn't help but wonder if other men on other journeys sat just out of eyeshot, hiding their mounts in the grass and watching us intently as we rumbled past.

Half-spheres of grayish stone protruded from the earth at points alongside the road. Some were polished until almost gleaming; others bore carved insignia of wings and wide staring eyes; yet others sat chipped and weathered as decaying teeth.

At one point, I swore that I saw sleek, indistinct forms rise up over a distant hilltop. They undulated like smoke shadows, kept pace with the wagon for some minutes, and then disappeared like slivers of a mirage.

And so it went.

Tall, mountainous clouds crawled over the western horizon. The sun dipped across their gray peaks, igniting them red and gold. Hills of fire, cascading high above the fertile earth. Dulling to a slow crimson, the sun stared from the edge of the world like the sleepy eye of some fathomless old beast.

It came to me that we were traveling north, perhaps north-west. A half-dozen maps of Hyrule flipped chaotically through my head. Gentle rustling, like drifts of papyrus. My brow furrowed; I sweated; I tried to concentrate. Nothing. Adrift without a compass, grabbing desperately at mental images of electron kingdoms, I let my mind go blank. It brought me no comfort, but it was certainly easier than attempting what was currently impossible.

A ragged, whitewashed signpost marked the spot where we stopped for the evening. Even before I could ask what its sloppy letters meant, Malora bent close and whispered, "It says, 'Travelers' Rest.'" The oxen turned off the road and the wagon followed, bumping and jittering over ruts at the edge of the cut.

The rest, as it turned out, was a clearing about twenty or thirty yards off the side of the road. It was surrounded by groves of umbrella-shaped trees and covered in a carpet of short grass. A small stream snaked between the trees and plunged down a hill to the south, where it followed a lazy path back through the prairie. At the center of the little campground was a stone fire ring, smeared black with use and piled high with old ashes.

The wagon clanked to a halt at the edge of the clearing. Both Malora and Tash jumped immediately off the seat and began to stretch. Ingo set about pacing the campsite's perimeter, grunting and muttering at every odd rock and offending scrub bush.

After a moment of odd vertigo, I followed suit and slid bonelessly to the ground. The muscles in my thighs and buttocks twitched and uncurled like cats luxuriating in the sun. A profound weariness overtook me – deeper and stronger than any I had felt within my immediate memory. My vision dulled at the edges. Thought became a plodding, golem thing.

Before I knew it, Malora had shoved a leather bucket with a rawhide handle into my hands. She led me into the stand of trees, chatting amiably and indicating that we were off to gather water. I only half-remember the little creek, the perfect leaves bobbing through its insistent flow. A cotton, hallucinatory quality suffused the world and all in it. Malora became a twittering spirit; the trees towered into an indigo sky; the weight of water in the bucket felt strange and otherworldly.

Thus, I retain only a dim, shadow memory of returning to the campsite, dropping my bag on the ground, and then flopping down beside it. I lay my head on the polyester surface and felt all sensation recede from me.

I caught: "Poor lad. Must be exhausted."

And then nothing.

I slept. It was deep and dreamless.

I'm certain that I would have slept through to dawn if I hadn't roused to growing interruptions. A hissing crackle – flames meeting water in a faraway place. The lazy buzz of unfamiliar night insects. Whispers, seemingly on all sides. Ghosts in the fluttering night.

"Ingo tells ya', Tash: Don't trust him."

"Come off it, Ingo. He seems like a fine lad. A bit," he coughed lightly, "_weak _in the head, but not bad. A good person."

"Well, Ingo doesn't have to tell ya' that you've been wrong before. You remember Beltram, eh?"

"Oh, don't bring that up again, please Din!"

"All Ingo is saying is that appearances have habits o' being deceiving. For instance, why there are letters of a foreign sort on that shirt o' his?"

"Well, he _is_ foreign himself . . ."

A snort. "Yes, fine. But why letters? What do they mean? He might be a soldier after all. _A deserter. _Or even worse than that – what if he's a prisoner who's on the escape?"

For this, Tash had no reply. So, Ingo continued. "If he's a cocked-up, rapist piece o' shit like Beltram–"

Desperately: "Keep your voice down . . ."

"– then we're in for another spot o' trouble. Tell you one thing: If he does more than say hello and how-do to Malora, Ingo may have to find out the color o' his brains."

Sadly, Tash whispered, "That won't be necessary." Then, unsure: "I'm certain that it won't be necessary."

I listened to the conversation with a tired, tense, unhappy effort. As sleep drifted from my body, I felt the day's aches and absurdities flood back in full force.

I stretched and yawned. My face itched. I opened my eyes to an indigo horizon, blotted by tree branches and washed out by the light of rising flames. A neat cook fire blazed in the black-scrubbed ring of stones. Night had fallen as I slept.

Two pairs of shadowed, wary eyes turned my direction. Tash and Ingo, standing close to the smoke-dappled side of the wagon. Mixed signals, crossed circuits: I rose unable to decide whether the exchange of looks was dangerous or merely awkward.

Tash coughed.

A pale specter sashayed into view, emerging from behind the wagon. Malora smiled as she saw me. "Sleep well?" she asked.

"Well enough." I shimmied shakily to my feet. A watery, numb sensation burbled up my neck and soaked my head. Well enough, but not enough. I still took in everything through a drained haze.

A slight pinch, insistent, a few inches below the bellybutton: At least the old standard needs of the body were running correctly. I started off toward the stands of trees, half-obscured in evening shadows.

"Where are you going?" Malora asked. I saw that she held in her hands a small pile of packages, wrapped in some kind of rough brown paper.

"Need to, uh," I paused, "need to take a whiz."

Though the now-familiar glimmer of confusion rippled in her eyes, Malora pressed, "We have a chamber pot, if you need it."

Such a strange offer. I felt like laughing, but this time the urge faded midway up my throat. It wasn't a joke – this girl was earnestly offering me a pot to take a shit in. There was something oddly endearing about it. At once charming and absurd.

"I'll be fine," I managed. As I tromped between the trees and away from the firelight, I felt all three pairs of eyes follow every step and movement. I felt like a performer exiting stage-right. I kept my eyes to the ground beneath my sneakers, watching blades of grass fold quietly beneath them.

When I returned from my cathartic piss, Malora sat on the spot where I had slept and her packages rested on a flat stone next to the campfire. Tash held what appeared to be a portable iron grill over the leaping flames, gingerly worrying edges onto the uncertain rocks of the fire ring.

Malora looked up and slid a hand away from the duffle bag that had just recently doubled as a stopgap pillow. "I cannot get it open," she said. Frustration paced about the edge of her voice.

I frowned. "What?"

"Your traveling bag. It has . . . a strange clasp. I've never seen anything like it before."

For a moment, I couldn't at all figure out what she was muttering about. Clasp? On my bag? Realizations no longer seemed to come gradually anymore. This one collided with me like a drunkard bumbling down an empty sidewalk.

"The zipper?" I chuffed.

"Is that what it's called?" She raised an eyebrow. "Zip-puhr?" It was her turn to laugh. "That's odd."

Something about that derisive little giggle set me on edge. I flopped down and possessively snatched the bag away. "_Zipper_," I said. "You know. 'To zip' and such shit." My fingers instinctively clutched the metal tag and pulled it back with tinny _thweep_. The bag opened wide; Malora's eyes opened wider. "What were you doing, anyway?"

Malora ignored my question, a grin growing at the edges of her lips like a floodtide. "That's," she marveled, "that's fantastic." She clapped her palms together in obvious delight. Leaning in closer, she pointed at the individual square black teeth of the zipper. "The clasp pulls every one of them together, doesn't it? Oh, father – you have to come see this!"

Rising bumble-hipped to his feet, Tash crossed the distance from the fire with a look of concerned bewilderment. As he stood over us, Malora stabbed a finger at the bag and chirped, "Show him!"

Nonplussed, I zipped the duffle bag shut. Tash's eyes narrowed. His mustache twitched. Behind him, a log snapped and collapsed within the fire ring. Blazing orange cinders billowed up between the uneven grating of the grill.

"Do it again," Tash murmured.

I zipped the bag open.

"Gods, that's strange," the man above whispered. "Never seen anything like it."

"That's what I said!" Malora babbled excitedly. "What other wonders do outerlanders have?"

"Have what now?" A low, rough bark: Ingo materialized beside me like a boney hobgoblin.

Tash and Malora, simultaneously: "Show him!"

Again, I demonstrated the zipper. _Thweep. _Closed. _Thweep. _Open. _Thweep. _Closed.

Despite Ingo's impassive expression, I think that he was impressed.

A curious kind of emotion arose in me now – something akin to (though not quite) pride. Wonders of the modern age! I was suddenly a torchbearer, not only for a half-glimpsed outer world, but for the entirety of its civilization. For a moment, I felt like some sneaker-clad Prometheus, stealing down from the spires of fabled Los Angeles to show these poor benighted people the truths of science and technology.

"If you think that's great," I beamed, "take a look at _this_." I jammed a hand down a pants pocket and revealed the battered green lighter that had been resting within. Two flicks of the thumb conjured a respectable, dancing flame.

The three Hylians gathered around me nodded thoughtfully – even politely. Tash rose back to his feet, regarded the tiny fire with raised eyebrows, and made a move as if to return to his cook fire. Malora fell back on her haunches and made an inscrutable expression.

"Aye, Ingo's seen a few o' those." The thin man straightened himself and dusted a blade of grass from his overalls. "Lot o' rich sots in Hylium use 'em to light their tobacco and branna." He sniffed. "Ain't seen one so small, though. Usually big glass things, y'know? Big as your fist."

Ah: So Malora's expression was vague disappointment. I sheepishly let the flame on the lighter die, and then pocketed it. "Oh. Already have those?" Cultural vertigo. "Well. The zipper's cool, huh?"

Ingo gave me a look like he had just run into a jabbering man in a tinfoil hat. He stalked off.

"It's all interesting, Linus," Malora attempted. "I would love to hear about the place you come from and all the places you've been. How it all compares to Hyrule." She flashed me the same knowing sphinx's smile as when she first leaned over me in the grass.

"Probably not tonight . . ." I murmured.

"Give the lad some time, Malon," Tash cut in. He leaned over the fire, unwrapping one of the packages with delicate movements. "If he's come here by magic, then it must have been quite a shock."

"It was," I blankly agreed.

A turn of the head, a flash of teeth. "Well, Linus – I hope that it won't hurt your appetite. I originally planned to give these to Count Raymond as a business gift, but I think that they'll do just fine to show my thanks to you." Brown paper unfurled and turned a dark, rich red in the flickering light. A thick slab of meat sat revealed, blood soaking and pooled about it on its paper altar. "Best beef in Hyrule, by Din!"

My stomach awoke. It gnawed on itself anxiously.

"And for dessert," Malora chimed, "we can have berries and sweet cream!"

"Right you are!" Tash laughed. He slid the steak onto the campfire grill, where it began immediately to sizzle. The sudden scent – grease-laced smoke and slow-cooked flesh – wafted past like a call to prayer. My eyes watered. Exhausted pleasure.

Resituating my bag, I leaned back and settled into it. Between the thin layers inside, I could feel the reassuring solidity of the Master Sword as it pressed into my spine. "That sounds . . . amazing," I said.

I turned my face up past the trees and took in the stars for the first time. The light of the campfire obscured the vision, casting dusky orange and white phantoms across the blue-black expanse. Besides the chatter of bugs and the hissing reminder of Tash's cooking, a gentle quiet descended.

"What did you want with my bag, anyway?" I suddenly asked.

Malora's attention had never left me; now I could feel it focus like a spyglass.

"I apologize," she whispered.

In the heavens, a rising glow. By turns silver, then red. Strange.

"Don't worry about it," I said. "I'm just curious."

Malora said, "I merely thought that you may want to change clothes, now that we've stopped for the night. The ones you're wearing are still filthy, after all . . ."

A growing curvature, above the treetops. Climbing the vault of blurry stars. A wash of blood and mercury.

"I'm fine," I pronounced, my attention elsewhere. "I'll change later. Right now, I'm just glad to be able to rest and oh sweet MOTHER OF CHRIST!"

It rose:

Grinning, laughing, howling, mocking, gibbering-mad in a silent tongue, its wide maw filled with blood. Mismatched eyes burned with bright, happy hatred. A horror recognized from the old days. Darkness descending. Three days locked forever in an idiot's pained smile, as brutal as incarnate doom.

A titanic, grotesque face stared down at me from the sky. _The moon_. It sat as bloated and hellish as the demon that surely had possessed it.

My body reacted before my brain. Eyes flaring wide; limbs scrabbling; lips flying back in a rictus of terror. I heard Malora shout and Tash yelp in surprise; I saw Ingo dash past; I felt my palms slick backward over the rough turf.

Fight or flight. Flight. _Flight. _No way to run. No way to outrun the fucking moon. The rising nightmare of _Zelda _had reached its apex, and words choked and suffocated behind my wagging tongue. My eyes never left the hideous thing floating higher into the sky, its oddly-sized eyes and jagged smile like accusations. Waking from a dream, to an utter nightmare. The old familiar images, tangling up on one another until they at last collapsed, crushing me beneath their godforsaken weight.

A dull, clamorous sound reached my ears. I realized that I was groaning, my throat chugging against itself like a broken engine.

Ingo's voice, shaking: "What is it? _What is it?_"

"Oh gods, he's gone mad . . ." Tash said.

"_What does he see?!_"

"Linus – please –" Malora's voice, gone thin and ragged as when she had screamed for help. "What ails you?" I felt her thin form scramble over the ground and perch beside me. A light, forceful hand landed on my shoulder.

The moon. It grew. It danced. It tittered. Bigger than life and full of all the malice of the universe, waiting for its moment. And then, and then –

"Linus!"

My eyes flitted right. Malora sat just beside me, gripping my shoulder tightly. She trembled with fright and gritted her teeth behind drawn lips.

"The moon," I hissed. "The _fucking moon_."

She stopped. Her eyes grew wary and her fingers slipped from my shirt. Slowly, Malora looked over her shoulder, past the trees, and to the abomination that so blithely lit the heavens in pale bands of gore. As she turned back, I could feel her move away from me slightly.

"What about it?"

Breath caught; the fire went low; even the insects stopped and seemed to listen. No one spoke.

My guts slithered about my abdomen. Fingers twitched and wrist bones vibrated. The shard of panic shoved through the center of my brain began to melt.

As if trying to be helpful, Malora suggested, "Have you never seen a full moon before?"

"You mean," I rasped, "the fucking _face_?"

I heard Ingo snort.

"Linus," Malora said gently, "there is _always _a face on the moon. The Old Demon. Since time immemorial." Hope – for salvation of the conversation or for my sanity, I knew not – crept back into her voice.

"Always?" I whispered. My voice was quiet. Small and pathetic. I felt like crying.

"Always," Tash murmured.

I looked back to the mad visage that had set me to such depths of childlike panic. A glowing, demonically red thing that ran with vein-like cracks and pulsing fissures. As it gained greater purchase in the sky, it seemed at once infinitely stranger and progressively more mundane. A distant mask, suspended in a sea of liquid night.

"Always," I repeated. Then, numbly: "I've never seen it before."

Amazement all around. "Truly?!"

"Yeah," I choked. I struggled to regain some posture that didn't indicate horror or cowardice. "Never have."

"How is that even possible?" Malora asked.

I thought quickly, stumbling over words. "Where I come from," I stammered, "I – we – must only see the other side of the moon. Your dark side."

"Oh?" She spoke cautiously. "Your homeland must be far away indeed, then."

I shrugged, trying to project a newfound calm. "It's, it's the only thing I can think of."

The skepticism and worry were so thick on the air that they almost overpowered the smell of charring beef. "Sorry," I said. "I'm – I apologize. That was a little much. I kind of – I kind of freaked out, didn't I?"

At last, Malora seemed to relax. "It's all right. It must have been very distressing."

"You're telling Ingo!" With a grunt and an angry glare, Ingo sat down on a rock and folded his arms.

"Sorry," I repeated. All the energy had gone from me, vanished like wood smoke on moonlight. Now all that was left was embarrassment and a lingering drunken sense of wasted adrenaline.

Tash's eyes remained crinkled with worry. It was only after two or three speculative passes of them that he allowed himself to return to his cooking. His daughter sat back down across from me and studied my nervous features.

"What _does _your side of the moon look like, Linus?"

I tried to remember what the moon had looked like in Los Angeles on the night I had attempted to sell the Master Sword. Had there even been a moon? My mind came up blank.

With a start, I realized that that had only been _last night. _No. Even closer than that. Somehow, someway, my fateful trek to the EXPRESS PAWN had taken place less than twelve hours ago.

My head swam. My cheek itched.

"No faces, for one," I said. "Well – kind of. Some people see a face. A small one. Nothing like that . . ." I drifted off and pointed meekly at the grinning horror hovering above us. As I studied its lines and features – each fang and fiery eye socket – I realized that what I saw was probably completely natural. Volcanism. Magma pooling to the lunar surface in great lakes and rivers and seas. Titanic calderas for eyes. An immense and winding series of lava-filled canyons for a twisted mouth. A celestial scarecrow, made demonic only by chance and man's habit of seeing patterns where there are none.

A scarecrow that almost made you piss your pants, I thought bitterly.

"They say that an old demon named Majora is trapped there," Malora said wistfully. Her words – familiar and yet so strange in their accents – wove around me like a lullaby. "The Hero of Time imprisoned him inside, but his evil scarred the surface of the moon. But, as long as it bears his face, he'll be forever stuck up in the heavens. Helpless."

"I've heard that same story," I said quietly. "Or something like it."

"Really?"

"Essentially. It's complicated."

"Oh."

Insects' oblivious buzzing; the assonant whisper of the stream.

"Do you feel better now, Linus? Are you . . . are you o-kay?"

I glanced up. Malora stared at me intensely, wringing her fingers together.

"Yes," I managed. "Sorry."

A wan smile. "Don't be."

My body felt heavy now, as if weighted at the extremities with lead. I lay back and put my hands behind my head. "That's good. I'm glad. This is all just . . . so strange."

Dripping fat crackled, spat, hissed. Heavy smells: Spicy smoke, broiling meat, hot iron. The haze-washed, unfamiliar points of blue and white stars spiraled away from the mad face of the moon. I stared into that alien sky and watched it like the unfolding of some dawning, apocalyptic revelation. Slow descent into a surreal night.

The steaks cooked quickly. We ate using wooden plates, two-tined forks, and knives so large they could be used to skin game. Other than a light dusting of salt (probably thrown on to preserve it in the back of the wagon), the meat was unspiced. I was pleasantly surprised that only the wood of the fire flavored the thick, hearty meal. We sopped at the juice with chunks of thick brown bread and drank cool, pungent milk straight from the bottle.

Soon after Malora bore away my cleaned plate, she reappeared with two smooth wood bowls – one bearing a rippling pond of creamy white and another heaped with spherical indigo fruit about the size of a strawberries. They looked – and when I plucked one from the bowl and examined it, _felt _– like oversized blueberries. Without much thought at all, I shoved the whole thing into my mouth.

The texture was firm and starchy like a strawberry, but the taste was sugary-tart, with an undertone that was like . . . was like . . . _maple._ Maple, I marveled.

I popped another in my mouth. It was softer and slightly sweeter. A strange taste dream.

"What are they called?" I asked, dazed and happy.

"Twillberries." Ingo grabbed one and snapped it down in a single bite. "Don't tell Ingo you ain't heard of 'em."

I just shook my head, took the bowl of sweet cream, and sipped. Flavors danced about one another – cream, berries, the fading ghost of a good steak. All of it bore down against me like a pleasant hand, sweeping away the earlier terror and uncertainty of the night. A rollercoaster of emotion, clattering and roaring like a monstrous thing.

It didn't take long to grow numb again. Berries, cream, berries. Glances to Malora and Tash. An eerie lack of conversation by the fireside. My eyelids once more grew massive. Time and space and the stars stretched out like wet, pulled clay.

I managed to stay awake for perhaps an hour more. When I dozed off this time, I didn't wake until Malora gently shook my shoulder the next morning.


	4. 4

**4**

It wasn't until the next day that I was really able to think through my new situation.

I didn't wake suddenly, starting with confusion. One would expect that, given my predicament. No – it didn't happen like that. As my shoulder rocked back and forth beneath Malora's fingers, I instead came to with a slow, lucid realization. Events formed and coalesced in my foggy mind. Images drifted across one another and built into a single, solid epiphany.

Wet grass tickled the backs of my hands. As I opened my eyes, beads of dew caught the wan light and shone like burning quicksilver. Slender, unfamiliar tree limbs cast shadows across my eyes.

I felt as if I were rising from a deep pool of crystalline water. My mind seemed to gasp, to sputter, and then to cry out in triumph:

This is Hyrule!

My heartbeat quickened. Every sense snapped into clarity as sharp as a razor's edge. No wavering; no bargaining; no stubborn sense of denial. It was simple: This was Hyrule. I had just woken up in _Hyrule_. Honest-to-God, in the flesh, solid and unyielding. Moist, cool, and still. Smelling of old smoke and damp leaves.

I slid a hand across one boney cheek and felt the insistent prickle of two days' stubble. Above me, Malora rose to her feet and smiled warmly. "Sleep well?" she asked.

A sure, strange giddiness took hold of me. A flood of emotions, some clashing violently against others: Excitement, tingling my limbs and brightening some inscrutable spot behind my innards. Fear and dread, twisting my small intestine and summoning a light sweat to my forehead. Inexplicable arousal (or perhaps not so inexplicable, given the lines of Malora's body as they appeared and disappeared through her dress), quickening my loins and forcing me to shift position for fear of being noticed. Certainty – that I was very much awake and very sane. Doubt, glowering like a misshapen gargoyle in the back of my mind.

That last feeling seemed to lunge forward and take hold of me then. It threatened to wipe away the beautiful, solid exultation of that first personal admission. All of this is impossible, I thought. There is no way that any of this can possibly be happening. Face it, Linus – none of this makes any sense. I am inside a video game. _A video game_. Absurd. Absolutely fucking absurd.

"Well? Don't be a lazy-bones, Linus. If you want to break your fast before we leave, you need to get up." Malora put her hands on her hips and gave me a playfully disapproving look.

Malon: A video game character. A new sensation flooded in with the others, roaring through my head like a maelstrom – vertigo. A kind of intellectual dizziness that threatened to pummel me down and leave me senseless, gasping for air, unable to move. How many times had I watched a polygon version of this girl stroll across a television screen – smiling, waiting, and rocking back and forth just as she was now? Had the outer dreams of my youth really been made flesh?

That sweet, secret spot that floated beyond the pit of my stomach fluttered with terror and elation.

I couldn't let all that sudden, buzzing energy go to waste. I launched upward with a growing grin, eager to take hold of my excitement and outrun my doubts. Carpe diem, motherfucker. I'll worry about my sanity later.

As I stretched my shoulders, exulting in the pop of compressed joints, Malora smiled and swayed expectantly. "So, I take it that you _did _sleep well," she said. I let loose an untamed, warbling yawn and nodded. "Good," she said. "We have a long way to go today. All the way to Oloro."

I nodded again and tried to mask the oily unease that slithered over me. No – no time for that now. "I should probably change clothes," I announced. With hands clasped together, I arched my back and managed to stretch even further and more fully. Stiff muscles and tight ligaments seemed to release every bit of their tension. Glorious.

Wait.

This was a daily ritual, usually performed in the temple of my bathroom. Often half-asleep and always a quarter-aware, I slipped through the motions with the sureness of any ingrained habit. For more than half a week, the morning ritual had ended in exactly the same way: A blast of ragged pain that doubled me over and ripped me decisively from any lingering slumber. Cracked ribs, singing their jagged song as I languidly stretched backward. Four mornings with the same four outcomes – me bunched up on the toilet seat, sweating, wide-eyed, with moaned curses contorting my lips.

Today, there was no pain.

I slipped a furtive hand under my shirt and probed up the side of my ribcage. Something dull and hateful ached when I pressed hard, like a fading old bruise. Otherwise, the sharp molten agony of the broken ribs was gone.

"Well?" Malora said. Her voice stole to me as if from a great distance.

I tried to compose myself. "Mah - um," I muttered. "Malora. Do I still have a black eye?"

She looked at me oddly – ever oddly – but not with the obvious confusion she had worn the day before. "You mean the mark you bore after yesterday's battle?"

"Yes."

She grew a tiny, pleased smirk. A cat, playing contentedly with a mouse between its paws. "Nay, Linus. Nay. It wasn't terrible yesterday. In fact, if I were to guess, you got that prize some time ago. This morning, no sign of it remains." She slipped past me and giggled. "I wonder why that is?"

It only took a moment. "The red potion," I marveled.

Those coy blue eyes seemed to dance, mirthful. "See? Hyrule ain't so hard to understand. Best get to changin', like you said. Father wants to go as soon as possible."

I watched her round the wagon and heard her begin to converse quietly with Tash.

_You really are an outerlander, aren't you?_

Nonplussed, I scooped up my bag. I exulted in the new freedom from pain in every movement, and headed into the groves of trees that lined the nearby brook.

Tiny, blue and gray birds hopped between the branches overhead. The stream tumbled down into a lowland, where fog swam about the surface of the water.

Okay. All right, I thought. Let's just slow it down a bit. Need to think. Need to sort things out. Get a handle on all this. I haven't been able to process anything since yesterday. It all just . . . built up. And then it spilled over me and smothered my thoughts. I had probably been in minor physical shock as well, given my injuries and the sudden emotional strain that accompanied them. That hadn't helped any.

So. So so so. Now what? Now fucking what? I glanced over my shoulder, back to the campsite. I could see Ingo, tall and dark as a shadow thrown by last night's fire, as he set about feeding and re-hitching the oxen. Now what? Now I adapt, that's fucking what. Now I figure out how it all works. Now I figure out how I got here, what "here" is, and eventually, how to get home.

Yes. I'd done it before, hadn't I? Christ, it felt like an epoch had passed between the time I had hauled the Master Sword from its pedestal and this bright, airy morning. But still . . . there was something there. This had happened to me before. Now? Now I just needed to figure out how it all connected together.

And so, as I dressed in the early morning shade, I took inventory. My total physical possessions – all I had in this wide strange world – were thus:

– One (1) Nike-brand vinyl duffle bag (black).  
– One (1) pair of denim jeans (grass-stained).  
– One (1) pair of socks (also likely grass-stained; very probably well on their way to smelling like a forgotten gym locker).  
– One (1) pair of Reebok tennis shoes.  
– Three (3) tee-shirts (one green, soiled; one burgundy, clean; one white, depicting a caricature of "Waldo" urinating from a fishing boat, also clean).

(It did not take long to decide on which shirt to change into. I slipped on the plain, dark red shirt and packed its brother deep in the bowels of the duffel bag.)

– One (1) pair of polyester running shorts (blue).  
– Six (6) pairs of boxer shorts (one currently worn; five in various checkered colors, unsoiled).

(At least, I thought ruefully, I have plenty of clean underwear.)

– One (1) plastic lighter (green).  
– One (1) elastic hair band (white).

No wallet. My mission to the EXPRESS PAWN had filled me with a purposeful kind of paranoia. I had wanted no one to know who I was, no matter what.

No watch. I had left it at home. Why? Unimportant.

No phone. No money – not even pocket change. No maps or compass. No guns, knives, grenades, flamethrowers, or body armor. No strategy guide. No hastily-printed list of cheat codes and 'sploits.

However, there was also:

– One (1) Master Sword.

As I pulled on what new clothes I could, I stared at the weapon nestled at my feet. The faded blue of its hilt and pommel seemed to shimmer in the morning twilight. Its blade rippled like mercury as it caught the shadows cast by leaves overhead.

For the first time, its presence didn't fill me with any kind of unease. It was the one constant between this place and my own, however distant that might be. Rather than an intruder and a usurper of worlds, it seemed like an old and reliable friend. _Don't worry_, it seemed to say. _Everything will work out. It will all be fine_.

I found that, in a strange way, I finally trusted it.

A sudden frown twisted my lips. Trust a sword? What the fuck was I thinking? The slip-sliding sense of doubt in my own sanity squirmed back into my head like an eel. For a moment, I felt my extremities go numb with fear and anxiety.

Oh Jesus. Trust a sword. _Trust a sword_. Malon, Talon, Ingo, Hyrule. I've gone fucking bonkers!

The moment passed quickly. As before, a mix of excitement and cool pragmatism washed away the doubt and fear. No matter what happened, this was no time to hesitate. No time to be paralyzed by self-defeating thoughts or worry. If I gave in to my personal darkness now, I really _would _go insane – or worse. All that mattered was to follow along and try to figure out just what had deposited me here. Here: A dreamscape, modeled after a world I had imagined since childhood.

There it was again: Giddy, surreal elation. I had spent the better part of my life obsessed with these games. And now I was part of one!

Don't be a fool.

This was not a video game. It was real. Very real. Not some construct or graphical illusion. These were not pixels, polygons, or shaders. The trees smelled of sap and new growth. The stream burbled over rocks and under rotting logs. Distantly, I could just pick out the rank, greasy stink of ox dung. From the other direction came the spicy-sharp, earthy scent of wet grass, borne along on a barely-perceptible breeze. And if I needed anything more concrete, the subtly itching wound on my face was all the evidence necessary. I traced its bottom edge with one finger and felt tiny, hot pinpricks race away at my touch.

I narrowed my eyes, crossed my arms, and stared out over the plains. The hills were an undulating gray-green in the light of early morning.

I'm a stranger here, I realized. No matter how many times I've visited Hyrule through a video game console, I'll still be at a disadvantage until I learn more. It's obvious that there are parallels, yes, and many of them. But – I needed to get the lay of the land before I put any of my previous experience to good use.

Just as I had taken inventory of my physical possessions, I needed to take stock of what I knew and how I could use it. Yes. This was imperative.

I scowled. But what did I really have? Just words. Individual words, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle strewn across a kitchen floor. Words like _moblin, Great Bay, Eldin, outerlander, Daphnes, Malon, palebelly, Hero of Time _. . . and _Ganon_. It was that last word that intrigued and unnerved me the most. I had felt the chill of it when Karrik said the name the day before, and I felt that same cold finger trace down my spine as I stood in the quiet grove off the travelers' rest.

Ganon. The name brought back unbidden memories in a tangle of association. Grinning, dead-eyed pictures of a pig-faced villain with a trident in one stunted hand. Controllers slick with sweat. Thin, screeching howls and booming dark laughter. Arrows of silver and gold. Crossed swords; razor-sharp tusks; purple shades that disappeared and reappeared like nightmares. Even the strange, paint-by-numbers Ganon of _The Book of Archemon_ returned to me then, borne as if from someone else's lifetime.

_My brother is Elkan Fir-Bulbin, captain of Lord Ganon's southern raiders. Do you understand yet?_

I swallowed. My throat felt dry. A feverish feeling spread across my forehead.

Did I understand? I wanted to think that I was starting to . . . but that was bullshit. I was a long fucking way from understanding. My mental inventory only yielded fantasies – television screen fancies of days past (and to be honest, not very long past at all). What I thought was "understanding" – the knowledge of _The Legend of Zelda _and all it entailed – was likely only a drop in the bucket.

"Oy! Quit daydreamin'! Ingo wants to get to Oloro before the gates close!"

The rough, rolling voice broke against my reverie like waves against a cliff side. I snapped to attention and spun about, eyes wide. Ingo stood at the periphery of the grove, his arms crossed and his face inscrutable.

"Well?" he growled.

A tiny, frigid wire of fear worked its way into the base of my brain. "S-sorry," I mumbled. "Just – I was just taking in the view."

Ingo grunted, "Aye, and a fine view it is. All the same, Ingo and the others are ready to break fast and take to the road." He gave me an obvious, appraising look. "No words on this one?" he asked after a short time.

"What?"

"No letters on yonder shirt," Ingo said. "Your last one had 'em. Words of a queer sort."

"Oh." Even though I had been half-asleep, I remembered the conversation I had overheard the night before. "Yeah," I stammered, "no letters on this one."

Ingo lifted his chin in awkward acknowledgment. "Aye, then. Hurry it up." With one last glance, full of exposed suspicion, he walked back toward the fire pit at the center of the campsite.

I watched his back as he went, fear giving way to slow annoyance and anger. The muscles between my shoulder blades knotted with tension. I'm going to keep my eye on you, Ingo. Oh yes. I'd better, if I know what's good for me. Once upon a time, a man very similar to you – even _identical_, truth be told – ended up betraying some folks I had become very fond of. Folks that are feeling very familiar right now. He even had the same name. Funny, huh?

It took only a moment to gather my things, steel myself, and head back into camp.

We ate a breakfast of leftover bread, twillberries, and a mild white cheese cut straight from the wheel. Tash, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed despite the hour, seemed enthused by my more energetic manner.

"Sleep," he opined, "is indeed the greatest cleanser."

Mouth full of cheese, I merely nodded half-hearted agreement.

As we had slept under the stars, there was blessedly little to pack back into the wagon. By the time we had finished with breakfast, our little group was only a few brief preparations away from being ready to depart. Soon enough, I hauled myself back up into the bucket seat, the strap of my duffel bag tight around my shoulder. The sun had crept furtively into the eastern sky by the time we left the campground, throwing tentative waves of pale light across the sweeping prairie.


	5. 5

**5**

We struck back into the flowing green of the plains. The road wound between the hills, and then entered a swath of country flat as a pan and given over to farmland full of towering plants that looked like corn. A fine, gauzy layer of mist held just above the fields. Through it, I could see silhouettes in broad hats, moving through the rows.

At the side of the road stood a short man in a threadbare, filthy tunic and rough gray pants. Pointed ears jutted beneath his piecemeal straw hat. Wary brown eyes. Skin like roadkill gone to leather. In one hand he pinched what looked like a hand-rolled cigarette, but whose smoke was too sickly-sweet to be tobacco. In the other, strong fingers wrapped about the splintery shaft of a spear.

The man raised a hand in greeting. Tash returned the gesture. Puffing at his strange little cigarette, the man watched us silently, solemnly as we passed out of sight.

Mist and drifting patches of fog burned away at the sun's approach, leaving behind only the scent of moisture on grass and a lingering cool sensation in the air. The road passed through the dew-laden fields and turned suddenly west, climbing up between two tall foothills. With the sunrise at our backs, everything before us took on a curious shadowy quality, as if the wagon were entering some fabled land of twilight. To our left, I spied the form of a great house or manor, perched in sunlit profile atop one of the hills. A thin stream of smoke rose from it like a lazy banner. In time, the road fell back into the bottom of the plains and even that singular landmark disappeared.

I stewed quietly as we went, trying to process as many details as I had missed the day before. Every sign and road marker was worth noting. Every footpath that led onto the road warranted a place in my mental catalogue. When the wagon passed even more farmers' fields, I leaned out and studied the distant workers as they went about their business. I examined the plants they grew and the long iron tools that they used to till, dig, and cut the odd tall stalk. The light was still too low and the distance too great to make out the fine details, but I made it my business to get better acquainted with the world I had so rudely stumbled into. Every bit of knowledge, however perfunctory, was going to be useful in the long run.

All the same, I could only glean so much from observation. Taking in the rough undyed tunics and woolen pants of these farming folk told me one thing . . . but to know their names, their ranks, their stations, and their stories was another. I might be able to draw parallels between the architecture of the few stone and timber houses I saw on hillsides and similar structures I knew from my studies . . . but I knew nothing of the context in which they were built. In short, the _why _and _how _of it all would elude me until I got those things from those who experienced them firsthand.

And so, when I judged the time was right, I began to ask questions.

I was blunt. Blunt, but cautious. "I have questions," I announced. When I saw the puzzled expressions of my companions, I decided to double back a bit. I cleared my throat and said, "I mean – that is, I hope it's not, uh, presumptuous of me. You know that I've never been to Hyrule . . ."

"And you want to know more about it?" Malora finished. That spritely little grin perked her features. I didn't know whether I was growing to love or hate that particular expression.

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, that's," I scratched nervously at the back of my neck, "pretty much the long and short of it."

"Well," Tash smiled, "we're at your service. Ask us whatever you want."

More confident now, I said, "I have to admit that I've never heard of the places we're traveling to."

"Oh?" Tash rumbled. "Which ones are those?"

"Oloro Town and Hylium."

Sunlight rippled through Malora's hair like molten metal as she did a literal double-take. Her expression was one of stunned incredulity. "You jest!" she laughed.

Here we go again. How much do you want to bet that today will be full of such precious moments? I tried to hide the mixture of embarrassment and annoyance that welled up in me, knotting both my stomach and the spot between my shoulders. "I don't, um . . . _jest_," I said.

"How can you not know of Hylium if you know anything of Hyrule itself?" Malora pressed.

I shrugged. The stitches on my face suddenly itched badly. "I know a lot about Hyrule. I've . . . heard stories about it my entire life." This was the truth, of course. A repackaged truth to be sure – but fundamentally correct. "But it's all spotty, you know? I could name a few towns and places, but there are – I mean – there are some stories that conflict with the others." I knitted my brow and scratched absently at a spot just below the spear wound. "So it's not surprising that I may not have heard of this place or that."

Both Tash and Malora regarded me quizzically. "Aye, but Hylium?" Tash ventured. "That's a right big place to miss."

Malora nodded vigorously. "Aye. Very true." She paused, as if to think. "You're sure – very sure – that you know nothing of Hylium?"

"Or Oloro," I added.

She sighed and turned to look out over the road as it plowed forth before us. To our right were yet more low hills, the grass covering them still glistening with moisture. To the left, the ordered farming plots had given way to sparsely wooded lowlands, where a lazy brook stole in and out between smooth gray tree trunks. The sun climbed at our shoulders and placed our trajectory as solidly northwest.

After taking a moment to think, Malora shot straight into answering my questions. "Hylium," she began, "is the capital city o' Hyrule. It's the seat o' the royal family and the whole o' the court."

"Also the biggest town in the whole buggerin' realm," Ingo added, his voice snaking up from below the wagon. He had been quiet so long that the sudden intrusion of his dark, grumbling tones bordered on disturbing.

"Aye," Malora said, nodding. "The center of everything in the kingdom, really. 'Nothing happens unless it starts in Hylium,' they say."

"So," I said tentatively, "it's like a Castle Town?"

"Castle Town?" Malora looked genuinely puzzled. "I suppose that there's a castle there, aye. Of a sort?" She seemed to struggle to justify my comparison.

Ingo barked derisive laughter. "Ain't been a Castle Town for almost a thousand years!" he yelled. "Nor a Spire Town or River's Crossin'. Hylium were all o' those, once. But not for a long, long time!"

"Oh," Malora said quietly. She flashed a sheepish smile. "Well, that's that, eh? What you know about this 'Castle Town,' that's Hylium now!" Her expression darkened considerably. "Are all of your stories about Hyrule really a thousand years old?" she asked.

The road passed under a stand of the same umbrella-shaped trees I had dressed beneath that morning. Uneven shadows swept over the wagon and painted the coats of the oxen in strange leopard patterns.

"I don't know," I answered. No need for subterfuge. I really had no idea..

A weird tension filled the spaces along the wagon seat. Malora seemed troubled by the disparity revealed by my lack of knowledge. I decided that this wouldn't do. "So," I said, "that, uh, makes sense. At least I have an idea of what Hylium's like, huh?" I laughed – tiny, nervous, and fake. I pictured the Castle Towns that had come before – all narrow streets and market squares, shoved up between curtain walls and shadowed by the looming towers of Hyrule Castle. Gray walls and cobbled streets. The familiar imagery felt soothing as it played through my mind's eye.

"Aye," Malora sighed. "You wanted to know about Oloro, too?"

"Yeah."

Tash cut in just as his daughter was opening her mouth to speak. "It's a big town. Very busy. Sits on the border between Eldin and Chovo."

"Provinces, you mean?" I asked.

"Oh?" He blinked and wrinkled his forehead in thought. "Ah – yes. Aye, aye. Easy to forget, eh?" Rubbing the back of his neck, Tash said, "You'll see for yourself by day's end. It's a fine place to rest. Full o' hot springs and gorons."

Malora shot a piercing, irritated glare at her father. Clearly, she didn't appreciate being interrupted. "Oh, yes. You have the right of it." She crossed her arms and slumped back into the seat, pouting. Tash looked at her nonplussed, obviously unaware that he had done anything to upset her.

Interesting temperament on that one, I considered. If she hadn't proven herself so shrewd at other times, I might have passed her off as something of a flake by this point. Moody and petulant, she had all the marks of a young woman who had never quite gotten over being daddy's spoiled little girl. Within minutes she seemed to recover from her foul mood, lapsing instead into a kind of self-conscious embarrassment. Her cheeks reddened and what little she had to say was in muted, half-whispered tones.

After this, the conversation waned awkwardly. I learned that Eldin Province was one of the largest in Hyrule, and that only the Lanayru and Seamarch provinces covered more landmass. Apparently, Hylium sat in the crux of Lanayru. In order to reach it, we had to cross through Chovo Province – which, as it happened, was one of the smallest of Hyrule's territories. It covered only a fraction of the land of its more massive neighbors.

At last, we fell back into a quiet punctuated only by the clump of ox-hooves and the deep groan of wagon wheels. It continued this way for the better part of an hour, until the road slashed up a hillside and straight onto the highway.

We came upon it sudden as a thunderclap. One moment the wagon was still cresting the hill; in the next, the highway appeared like a wide earthen river that wound its way from horizon to horizon. The rutted road we had traveled seemed a mere tributary next to it, joining the mother-course at an awkward angle. Where the two met, a tall, elegant signpost pointed in three directions – one the way we came, one to the north, and one guiding travelers south. The signs themselves were of smooth white stone, fastened to the high posts with rivets of dark steel. The letters were carved expertly into the rock and then painted with perfect strokes of black.

Of course, I couldn't read any of it – but appreciation is given where it's due.

The highway itself was a track of red-brown bare earth so worn and beaten that it had long ago turned to hardpan. Rocks lined the edges of the highway, clearly delineating how and when one might enter or exit. Most were cracked and jagged chunks of miscellaneous stone, but scattered among them were the same smooth, carved domes I had seen the day before. The highway was four times the size of our little road, easily making room for a constant flow of traffic as it made its way north and south. From my vantage point atop the hill, I could already see two immense covered wagons trundling away from us – carrying God knows what toward the swaying green distance of the south.

Men and women (other than Malora, the first I had seen since coming to Hyrule) walked the road as well. Most were farmers, just like the ones I had seen earlier in the morning. They hauled hand-carts and schlepped loads on their backs. Bundles of sticks, burlap bags, wooden crates, barrels small and large. They led horses, stolid donkeys, and teams of unhitched oxen. By and large, the men wore the same sort of basic clothing I had seen on the farm workers earlier – tunics and trousers of various shades of browns and grays. The women wore rough-spun work dresses, their hair bundled up under shawls and wide straw hats.

Among the throng, I saw a group of men ride past on huge, beautiful black horses. Their clothes were of fine make, all blue and gold thread sewn in expert patterns across their shirts and vests. One wore flowing robes of dark plum purple and looked down on the crowd with a soft, disdainful face. For a moment, I caught his distant eyes and saw in them a kind of seething, barely-restrained contempt. After that, I never saw him again.

"The junction's already busy today," Tash commented. He whipped the reins and drove the wagon up onto the beaten track. A gaggle of young men, long poles over their shoulders and laughter on their lips, stopped to let us through. We left the little road behind and proceeded straight north.

I was about to ask about the fluctuating crowds when I noticed that our road was not the only one that connected onto the highway. Pale stone signposts pointed down previously hidden routes that branched off the highway and out into the grasslands. To the west, many roads – some larger than the one we had come on, some no more than glorified trails – twisted off into a landscape of open prairie and distant farmland. Once more, I was bowled over by the utter, uninterrupted _vastness _of this country. It stretched on without end, dotted with tiny clusters of buildings and divided by the paler green squares and circles of fields.

"Is this a major intersection?" I asked idly.

Tash nodded. He kept his eyes on the road and his reins, warier because of the flood of people entering and exiting the highway. "Not the biggest one on the Lord's Highway, but busy all the same. Looks like folk're havin' a market day or some such. Ain't ever this crowded this time o' day."

To the left of the wagon, I watched a woman in a blue-gray dress lead a pair of chattering children off the highway and onto a side-road. To the right, a short man in a robe of silvery cloth stumped his way around the path of the wagon. In one hand he held a tall, lacquered staff with a head of burnished bronze. From this head swung three brass orbs that jangled slightly as he walked. Bells, or perhaps censers. Strange. The small man wore a round straw hat, similar to those of the farmers but of a fine and ornate weave.

As he strolled beneath me, he glanced upward.

Beneath the hat, I caught sight of a round, flat face the color of dried desert mud. Huge, shining black eyes – like flies' eyes – passed over me with all the emotion of an onyx sculpture. A thin, tight mouth seemed drawn in pain or displeasure. And as soon as I craned my neck to stare, dumbfounded, the little man (was it a man?) and the wagon parted, each headed their own direction down the highway.

I whipped back to the others. "What the hell was that!" I yelped.

"What was what?" Tash asked.

"That – guy! The guy in the hat that just passed by!"

Malora covered her mouth with her hand, trying (and failing) to hide the gout of laughter that bubbled past her lips.

Down on the ground, Ingo spread a disturbingly predatory smile. "Don't tell Ingo you ain't ever seen a goron, kid."

Of course I've seen gorons, I thought bitterly. Scores of them! They were charming little rock men who thumped their chests and rolled about like living boulders. As strange as they were, nothing had prepared me for the sheer, uncanny _alien_ feeling the face under the hat had exuded. It was both chilling and utterly exhilarating.

"I – no." More haughtily now, "Of course not! How many times do I have to tell you?" I rose slightly in my seat. "It's my first fucking time on this crazy jungle cruise!"

Ingo shrugged; Tash appeared to shrink in his seat; Malora whooped enthusiastic laughter. The uncomfortable spell cast by the end of the previous conversation was broken.


	6. 6

**6**

The wagon moved slowly through the junction. I watched intently for other goron sightings, but ended up disappointed.

The morning smelled of dust and manure. A few enterprising merchants had set up shop off the side of the road, hawking eggs or produce from the backs of shabby buckboards. Bolts of cloth and glassware beckoned from ramshackle booths. One man stood on the edge of a great covered wagon, whose canvas was painted with unintelligible runes and stars. He shouted passionately about elixirs, unguents, and miracle cures. In one hand he held a decanter of something gray and milky; with the other, he tugged anxiously at the ratty cravat tied about his throat. Most gave him a wide berth.

A low watchtower, perhaps two and a half stories tall at most, stood at the last of the roads to branch off the highway junction. It rose up on four rickety supports of rough timber, terminating in a roofed crow's nest just large enough to seat three or four people. An uneven ladder led up from the buried foundations. The wood looked bright and raw, as if the whole affair had just recently been thrown up – and in a hurry. Some of the beams crossing between the supports still shone with patches of drying sap.

A pair of figures peered out over the road and watched us come. Two keen, anxious eyes beside a pair that looked intensely bored. Each man wore dull chain mail under airy tunics of cerulean blue. Sweat trickled across their brows.

As we passed the tower, Ingo raised a first above his head at an angle. He never broke stride. The watchman on the left – he with the hard eyes – returned the gesture and nodded decisively.

For a single mad moment, I had the urge to shout, _Black power!_ I thought better of it.

After the tower passed, so too did the junction. The wagon entered a stretch of relatively empty highway. Other travelers came and went in my peripheral vision, mostly on horseback. At the moment, my mind had turned back to the tower and its implications. As the others settled into the plod of the open road, I proceeded to go about bringing things down.

"Tell me about the war." I hadn't really thought about saying it so bluntly, but there we were.

I more than expected my travel companions to balk. Tash's hands seemed to tighten on the reins, but he never missed a beat as he began speaking. "Aye, you'll want to know about that." He gave me an uncharacteristically dark glance.

"Uh, so – Hyrule is at war with the moblins, right?" I ventured.

"Aye. Them an' the bokoblins."

I blinked. "Little guys? Purple?" I asked.

"Not so little as you'd think," Ingo chuffed. He rubbed at one shoulder as if it pained him. "An' some of 'em are gray or black in the skin. All have white hair, though."

I nodded. "Then I know 'em. Why are you fighting, then?"

A sleek gray stallion galloped past us. It and its rider disappeared south in a blur of furious motion.

"Other than that the mobs are a bunch o' stinkin' monsters without souls?" Ingo spat. He looked back over his shoulder at me, his face unnervingly passive.

_Such things you Hylians say! Is it any wonder why we are at war?_

I felt my eyebrows rise. Yes. Such things.

Tash shrugged. Beside him, Malora crossed her arms and waited. "Well now – don't know about that," Tash said. Above the noise of hoof beats and the wheels, I could hear Ingo's derisive grunt. "Mobs're just . . . different, you know? Not like normal folk at all. Come from the mountains. It's hard country up there, and they say that it made 'em vicious. As long as there's been a Hyrule, they've come down from the hills and raided our people. I'd say there's been a war with the mobs, oh, every generation or so. Some bigger than others. This is . . ." he swallowed, "this is probably the biggest one in centuries."

There was a breath of quiet as Tash rolled his thick neck. When I stared at him as I did now, the world beyond him seemed little more than two infinite seas of pale blue and dark green, layered atop one another.

"The last war were much smaller. Happened about, oh, twenty years back," Tash continued.

Ingo held back from the oxen now, obviously trying to keep in range of the conversation. He piped up, raising his voice over the mild din of the road. "Twenty-two!" he shouted. "Twenty-two years, by Din!"

"Hrm. Right," Tash said. "See, for the last hundred years or so the kings o' Hyrule have had the mobs well in hand. Signed treaties an' such. Kept 'em in the valleys of the Death Mountains or even gave 'em some land in places up north. Then a bunch o' bad seeds in the tribes got it in their heads to break the treaties and start their plunderin' again. Ol' Daphnes came down on them like a hammer, by goddesses. What tribes were left afterward signed the new treaty or faced gettin' wiped off the map."

He sighed. "After that, the tribes didn't make much trouble. A few came down out o' the mountains permanent an' tried to live like decent folk. Traded and farmed and even started worshippin' the goddesses."

"Wait," I interjected. "Who did they worship before?"

Tash shrugged. "Oh, some bad old gods – the kind that probably tussled with the goddesses back in the days o' fire, before men."

Ingo snorted audibly.

"What's that about?" I asked.

Both Tash and Malora laughed. "Ingo's a strict Originalist," Malora said, smiling.

"What's that mean?"

"Means that Ingo don't believe in any other gods than Din n' Nayru n' Farore. You can keep yer old gods – and the new ones, too. Ingo was told as a boy that there ain't nuthin' but the Three, so there ain't nuthin' but the Three. None o' this 'Three-Who-Are-One,' heathen, Shiekah ox-shite either." He spoke with earnest, measured seriousness. "Just them three. Always have been and always will be. They're the land, the sky, and the oceans. Power n' wisdom n' courage. Everything," Ingo finished. "Goddesses praised." 

He made a gesture with his hands then, using his thumbs and forefingers to trace three triangles through the air. As he did, Tash and Malora followed suit.

"Goddesses praised," they whispered in unison.

I felt awkward not joining in, but decided that even an attempt to imitate them would probably come off as mocking. A tiny patch of silence crept over us. As it worked its way out of our systems, another watchtower came and went on the eastern hillside.

Malora sat up and stretched. Beneath her pale skin, hidden muscles pulled strong and taut. She said, "Ain't all this a little off the subject? We were talking about why the moblins rebelled."

"Aye, well . . ." Tash started. "So, where was I?"

"Something about the moblins trying to fit in with Hylians?" I guessed.

"Oh – right. Well, a few did, at least. Called themselves 'the civilized tribes' or some such thing. They even –"

"They even tried to put their children through Hylian schools!" Malora interrupted. It was Tash's turn to look irritated. Malora continued, "When I was in grammar school, a mob was in one o' my classes. Always sat in the back an' didn't say anything. Was always breakin' quills with those stubby fingers o' his. Mostly we'd just laugh at him, and he never fought back. Didn't last more than a month or two. He probably ended up joinin' the rebellion with all the others."

"Perhaps . . ." Tash murmured. His gaze was suddenly distant, as if he was lost in thought.

"All I know is that they're . . . _icky_." Malora shuddered, though the thrill was obviously far from unpleasant. "After all, they don't honor their bodies like the goddesses command. They pierce themselves! Earrings and even things through those big ugly noses of theirs!" Malora leaned to me conspiratorially. "They even give themselves _tattoos_! Isn't that awful!"

I found myself tugging absently at my left shirt sleeve. "Tattoos?"

"Aye." Tash nodded gravely. "Barin' blasphemy is one thing, but against their own bodies?" It was his turn to shiver. "Like I said, they're just different than us. Some say we ain't meant to live together, an' we'll just keep fightin' so long as the other lives."

Note to self: Do not take off your shirt ever again. Either that or start sporting some kind of fashionable armband.

"So," I said, eager to divert the subject, "the moblins broke their treaties again, then?" Both Tash and Malora nodded somberly. "When? And why?"

A shadow slipped over the wagon. I craned my neck and watched the silhouette of a massive bird soar over the highway and out across the plains.

Tash cleared his throat and began to speak slowly. "Been just over four years since the mobs started breakin' away. Right after . . . err, right after the Declaration of Blood." His mustache twitched and bristled.

"Oh come off it, Tash. Don't be such a milksop!" Ingo walked just below us now, hobbling determinedly next to the hitch. Had he tripped then, he stood a good chance of rolling under one of the wagon's huge, heavy wheels. "Even if he don't already know what's really going on, he'll find out soon enough."

"But . . ." Tash stammered.

"Stop dancin' around the truth of it. This ain't just some fight against a bunch o' savages out on the frontier. There are men 'neath those banners as well – not to mention zora, gorons, an' a whole colony o' fairies." Ingo's voice rose. Even as they gained volume, his words remained calm and steady. "A full third o' this great kingdom's fallen before the armies in the north. They raid decent folk like us every day – burnin' an' lootin' an' rapin', too. The dark times have come again, like the prophecies of old!"

Tash stared down at his right-hand man, seemingly helpless and frightened. I felt something lightly touch my shoulder, and realized after a moment that it was Malora's hand.

"No!" Ingo roared. "This most definitely ain't a normal war. What we got here is a war between good an' evil. Between order n' anarchy." Ingo threw me a dark, knowing look. "Between all that stand with the goddesses and those that follow Ganon himself."

A tendril of sweat oozed across my neck and onto my spine. It felt like a stream of glacial runoff.

Ingo's gaze never left me. The wagon had slowed to a crawl. One of the oxen snorted irritably and swatted about with its tail. "Do you know of Ganon, kid?" Ingo asked. His voice was a low, lupine rumble.

"I know Ganon," I said coolly.

A heavy buckboard, pulled by a single determined ox, rattled past us going the opposite direction. I twitched involuntarily at its passing.

"What do you know about him?" Malora asked quietly.

"Ganon?" I scratched lightly at the stitching across my face. "Um. Well, there isn't really a story about Hyrule without Ganon, right?"

It was meant to lighten the mood, but the three people facing me only nodded seriously. "Aye, ain't that the truth?" Tash murmured.

I took a moment to think, and then continued, "It's like what I know about the towns. I know a lot of stories, but most conflict with one or two of the others." All eyes on me, expectant. Best choose my words carefully. "They . . . they say that he tried to conquer Hyrule more than once. That he," oh, how best to distill it all down, "he wants to control the power of the Triforce."

Nods all around.

"It's more complicated than that," Malora said, "but you have the right of it. And so does Ingo. It ain't so much the moblins that Hyrule's at war with – it's Ganon."

Ingo quietly turned back to the oxen as Tash urged them back into their previous steady pace. The tall man glanced back over his shoulder from time to time, obviously in an attempt to stay tuned to the conversation.

"They say that all o' history is a great cycle," Malora explained. She stared straight ahead, hands folded in her lap, as if some point beyond the rise of the highway held every bit of her focus. "In the beginning, when the three goddesses created the world, they gave unto mankind a symbol of their love and power. A great and wonderful relic . . ."

"The Triforce," I breathed.

"Yes. The divine symbol o' the Three. Their grace and power, manifested in the world. In the first days, Ganon was a wicked man who lusted after power above all else. They say that he snuck into the Sacred Realm and tried to take the Triforce for himself. He touched it, and looked into the center of creation. When the goddesses learned what he had done, they burned their mark on him and turned him out of their sight. He went out to the wilderness to wander."

Malformed claws of blue-gray stone passed along the hillsides. The light had grown strong and the day grew ever warmer. A small troupe of grim-faced men in cloaks trotted by on horseback.

"The goddesses ruined Ganon so completely that he stopped being human at all. Because he had touched the divine power, he ended up living a long, long time. Eventually, he learned how to draw strength from his curse. He rose from a mere beast to become a mighty sorcerer. He gathered armies and waged war against all those who worshipped the Three. It was only when a hero – _the Hero_ – stood up to him that Ganon was cast down and destroyed.

"_But_," Malora said, "when Ganon touched the Triforce, something happened. It, well, it depends on who you ask as to what exactly that was." I caught her glancing at Ingo apprehensively. "Some say that because he saw the heart of all things – and because he was the first and only one to be forsaken by the goddesses – he was destined to be born again. Ganon became . . ." she paused, considering. "Ganon became the Eternal Enemy. The Old Darkness. For thousands of years, he has been part of the world's cycle of death and rebirth. Every time he is born again, another age of Hyrule comes to an end."

Words – Ingo's words – floated to me like wraiths. "Come to an end in blood an' fire!"

Seemingly shaken, Malora pressed on. "And every time he rises, the Hero rises too. It's happened dozens of times. Ganon appears and destroys everything in his path, trying to get back at the goddesses. And then the Hero – the Link to the Triforce – appears with sword in hand to defeat him."

"And now Ganon has come again," I said flatly.

Over her shoulder, Tash looked to me with worried eyes. "It's been almost eight-hundred years since the last time Ganon rose an' fell. I don't think any o' us expected to see his comin' in our lifetimes."

Malora nodded vigorously. "Aye!" she agreed.

Something had been tugging at me throughout the conversation, its grip growing stronger with each passing moment. Now, I could suppress it no longer. "When you say, 'Ganon,'" I asked, "do you also mean 'Ganondorf?'"

Malora shook her head slowly. Clearing a red bang from her eyes, she said, "Nay. I've never heard the name before."

A sensation, a kind of psychic itch, scrabbled about the back of my head now. "In some of the ga – I mean, stories. _Stories_." Get it straight, numbnuts. "In some of the stories I was told, Ganon was once called Ganondorf. He was, uh, a bandit. A king of thieves from a tribe called the Gerudo."

Down the bucket seat, Tash nodded thoughtfully. "Mayhap that was his name once, gone ten-thousand years and more. Before he got the curse o' the goddesses." His brow scrunched into a sweat-streaked mass of wrinkles. "As for the Gerudo, well, that's possible too, I suppose. The storytellers say that the last o' their tribe disappeared west, across the great desert. There ain't a livin' man who's seen 'em."

I leaned forward in the seat and gestured broadly, meaninglessly. "What about now? I mean – when did this, um, _version _of Ganon show up? Did he just step out of the shadows and – bam! – war were declared?" I was speaking so quickly that I hadn't even noticed my slip into internet slang.

"First rumors o' somethin' happenin' started about five years ago," Tash said. "Dark tidings from the Death Mountains up north. Tales about the bokoblins goin' crazy and the mobs disappearin' from their villages. Then, in aught-nine, a bunch o' men in black cloaks stormed the royal palace in Hylium and tried to murder King Daphnes. They all bore a letter declarin' that Ganon himself was alive an' well, an' that he intended to march on Hyrule from the mountains. They called that whole mess 'The Declaration o' Blood.' And things just got worse from there."

"Hyrule has been at war ever since," Malora said. Her voice was weirdly emotionless. War, it seemed, now bore the same weight as the weather.

"But who is he? Where did he come from?" I asked.

"Well, that's the question, ain't it?" Tash chuckled, but sounded forced and joyless. "Nobody knows," he continued. "Oh, there're plenty o' rumors an' tall tales. The old stories say that he were a beast like the moblins – a big boar-man with tusks like swords. A few even say that the mobs are all descended from his bastard, monster children."

"_Father_," Malora chided.

"What?" Tash chuffed. "They do! Just because you don't like it, Malon dear, doesn't mean it don't bear mentioning." He collected himself and said, "Just about every soldier has a story about seein' Ganon on the battlefield during the big offensives. Mostly from friends o' friends' cousins, o' course. I heard all sorts – that he rides a dragon into battle; that he's ten feet tall an' covered with armor made from the bones o' his enemies; that he's really a handsome young man with flowin' black hair; that his footsteps make the earth shake. It's all bollocks, of course."

A pause.

"The one thing I do know is that he's a crafty son of a bitch. Nobody real or reliable's ever seen him and lived to tell about it. He knows when to attack and when to retreat. An' he managed to convince an entire legion o' Hyrule's soldiers – plus a whole guild o' alchemists – to join his cause. Whatever he is, he ain't some dumb monster." Tash sniffed and then rubbed at his bulbous nose.

"If no one's ever seen him, then how do they know it's really Ganon?" I asked.

Another mirthless laugh. "Well Linus, here's how I figure it: Plenty o' people have seen him. Impossible not to. I just figure that all their skulls are on pikes around the gates o' Kakariko by now." As Malora had, Tash gazed forward as if trying to find a distant speck on the horizon. "An' really, who else could have done all this? On that count, all o' Hyrule knows it. Everyone. Me – I can feel it in my bones. It's Ganon, come again to make war on all us that still love the goddesses. And as horrible as it is to say . . . as much as it makes me want to weep . . . up until now, he's been winnin'."

The conversation went cold as a frozen corpse.

As the wagon trundled on, I drew the duffle bag and its contents closer to my body. The sun shone cheerily and a warm breeze swept into from the ocean of grass, but I couldn't seem to get warm. For a time, a single thought echoed through my skull, over and over again:

What the hell have I gotten myself into?


	7. 7

**7**

As the day continued, my spirits heightened with each passing mile. Despite my initial shock at the depth of Hyrule's problems, I found it impossible to remain upset. The world _felt _different here on the highway. The spaces seemed more open and all the sensations were sharper. I came to enjoy the clean, gentle air and unfiltered sunlight. I could see for miles from atop the wagon, the grasslands stretching out from the road in every direction. The day became hot and vaguely humid.

Everything served to remind me that this was indeed a living, vital world – and not at all like any video game. Every sound, every shape, and every scent hammered against me until I was paradoxically numb with it all. This was real, _so real_, and it drew me into a kind of pleasant trance.

So much to see and smell and experience! So much to tell me that I was awake and alive and moving through a startlingly new world.

A bronze-shelled beetle the size of a robin lighting on the roof of the wagon to rest its wings. A swath of flowers the size of several football fields, dancing with the breeze in waves of pearlescent white and deep red. An intricate covered bridge that arced over the course of a shining river twice the width of the highway. Steeples and slate rooftops, glittering in the distance.

Unfortunately, the fugue was transitory. Reality – as is its wont – gradually lost its charm. For every strange, jewel-like insect there was a patch of open sores on the face of a passing farmhand. For every whiff of summer and flowers carried on the breeze, there was the slow realization that no one in my party was wearing deodorant. Even Malora, who had carried with her a kind of earthy musk, started to smell a bit rank as the sun climbed the sky. More than a day out from a shower, I wasn't exactly a fine rose myself.

The more I became accustomed to Hyrule not as some dreamlike ideal, but as a blunt and immediate reality, the more I had to face the fact that I had to _interact _with it. Directly. There was no controller here, no handy interface and inventory screen.

And no continues, I realized darkly. When my thoughts turned back to Karrik and his moblins, the watchtowers that dotted the highway, and the tales of Ganon's war, I sobered quickly. I tried to focus on more immediate things.

And so I turned for a time to observing my comrades, in an effort to know them more fully. It was all too easy to distance myself from them, after all. I looked at Malora and Tash and saw a pair of figures as strange and pale as ghosts. I found myself averting my eyes from them at points during our journey, if only to banish the pounding sense of cognitive dissonance that they summoned within my head. A plump, jolly man and his gregarious daughter. Oh, there were differences – many differences indeed – but these were, on the surface, carbon copies of the same people I had met through a television screen when I was only a teenager. I tried repeatedly not to think about, because the thought made my stomach do greasy somersaults.

It helped to focus on all the things that set them apart – those things that could remind me that I was dealing with honest flesh and blood. Little details: Body odor. Strands of Malora's hair as they caught the breeze and tickled against my cheek. The uneven dye-work on the blue threads of her dress. Grass stains. Old acne pockmarks across Tash's cheekbones. A white, almost invisible curl of scar tissue on Malora's chin.

And then there was Ingo.

The more I watched Ingo, the more he subtly terrified me. There was a cold, calm cruelty to his movements. He took in everything with eyes that were at once expressionless and judgmental. Unhurried and unflinching, his manner was as solid as a drill sergeant. When I thought back to his counterpart in the video games, my guts did more than just clench – they seemed to retreat entirely, off into some cavernous void beyond my spinal column.

After the dour turn that it had previously taken, I tried to keep the present conversation as light as possible. Over the next two hours or so, I listened as Malora and Tash bandied anecdotes and factoids back and forth, only raising my voice to ask an occasional question. Now that they knew just how ignorant their new acquaintance was in the ways of the world, my companions were fairly enthusiastic in pointing out and explaining any odd thing that happened to catch their attention. Tash took to the task especially well – though in such strange and sudden bursts that it was hard to keep up.

Here was a road leading to a brewery, and there was a bush whose berries were poisonous unless first soaked in milk. Over yonder stood a copse of trees called nomad spruce; back yonder was a sign pointing the way to a country temple. That there road led to a village named Ballysong, and beyond that was a lake that some men said was haunted.

And so on. I caught as much as I could, hoping against hope that I might hear some clue about the larger questions that dogged me. None came.

As the sun reached its zenith, we stopped the wagon in a depression just off the highway and ate a meal of bread, cheese, and salted beef. Not half-bad. I shared a canteen of water with Malora and accepted a sip off a bulging leather bladder passed to me by Tash. It contained a strong, sour wine that made my head swim the moment I swallowed a mouthful.

Caught in the unexpected rush of the spirits, it took me a moment to realize that the conversation had turned to stranger – and weightier – tidings.

"Did you hear the news from Lowen Town?" Tash nodded to Ingo.

"Aye," Ingo mumbled. "Ingo heard."

A few feet away, sitting with her dress spread out on the grass, Malora nodded soberly. "Goddesses, we can only hope . . ." she sighed.

"Don't go thinkin' it were real, child," Ingo said. He chomped at a chunk of bread, chewed aggressively, and continued, "If it weren't really him the first time or the second, likely it ain't him the ninth or tenth."

Malora sighed, "You probably have the right of it . . ."

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

The redhead's eyes flicked to me nervously. She played with the edge of her dress as she spoke. "Just gossip, really. It's nothing."

I grinned. "C'mon. Tell me."

Across the little clearing, Ingo's expression darkened. He sipped at some water and said nothing.

Making an attempt at a smile and failing, Malora said, "Oh, the usual. Someone in Lowen Town – that's down south on the River Lepsis, if you don't know – claims that they saw the Hero a month or two back. They claim he's out lookin' for the Lost Woods, an' the Master Sword with 'em."

Stones tumbled from one side of my stomach to the other. I managed to keep a straight face. "So he's around too, huh? Link?"

A honking, dismissive laugh drew my attention to Tash. "Ah, who knows? We've been waitin' for him to appear for goin' on five years and so far all we got is lies an' rumors. A few fools have all but stood on top o' the mountains and yelled it to the realm, but in the end they were all pretenders. Every once and a while you hear somethin' real promisin' and get to hopin' that the Hero's gonna go north and tear down Ganon once and for all . . ." Tash seemed to deflate as he let loose a weary sigh. "But the armies o' Hyrule still sit along No Man's Land and don't move. An' Ganon's raider's still come south to plunder. So your guess is as good as ours regardin' the Link."

Since the talk was leaning that way, I asked, "You know what I don't get? Why is his name always 'Link?' I mean – how does that happen? He shows up a hundred times over the, uh, centuries, and _every fucking time _he's named 'Link?'"

Malora fell back as if struck, roaring and snorting delighted laughter. When at last she took control of herself, she crossed her arms and said between giggles, "Oh, you're silly. That's just – heehee – very silly."

"What?" I asked indignantly.

Malora grinned. A small dark chunk of jerky stuck out between her incisors. "His _name _isn't 'Link!' That's the title. The Hero's title. Haha. Like 'Sir' or 'Count' or 'Lord.' The Hero is literally connected to the Triforce." She seemed to grow more serious. "The will and the power of the goddesses flow through the Hero. He is the Link to the Triforce. He bears its mark and heralds its glory. So when the tales call him 'the Link,' it's not his name. They all had different names – just lost to time."

I nodded slowly. "That . . . makes sense, I suppose." Never mind that _my _tales had left out the operational "the" of the title. But no matter.

"We mostly just know 'em by their adventures, anyway. They say that every time he rises, the Hero comes from low birth, does great deeds, defeats Ganon, and then disappears. So we know 'em only by the times they lived in and the things they did. An' some are more famous than others. You heard of the Hero of Time, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, of course. He's the most famous o' the bunch! An' you probably know the Hero of the Darkness, the Hero of the Winds, and the Hero of the Sleeping Bride. But there were others. Hundreds, maybe.

"My ol' teacher Uma said that history is funny. Mostly it gets murky the farther back you go, but there are also patches o' fog along the way. People just . . . _forget _things. So we only know the titles o' some of 'em. There's the Hero of Twilight and the Hero of the Dust, for instance – nobody I ever asked knew who they were or what they did. They say that the most recent Link was called the Hero of the Tower, but all anyone knows about him is that he defeated Ganon somewhere in the east."

"But this one, well, has to be _around_, right?"

Everyone shrugged. Ingo made an unfamiliar, weak-handed gesture with three clenched fingers against his temple. _Fuck if I know_, it seemed to indicate.

Malora shifted her weight and placed her hands on her knees. "You could say that every man, woman, an' child wants to know that, Linus. It's said that only the Link can defeat Ganon . . ."

I shook my head slightly and said, "Seriously, though. Are people really just sitting around and waiting for the Hero to show up and save the day? That's, uh, not a very fucking efficient use of your time."

Malora winced.

Tash murmured, "Aye, it's true. King Daphnes ain't makin' many friends with this 'wait an' see' policy o' his. Bu it ain't as if there's no one willin' to step up and fight the good fight." He gestured with the mouth of his wineskin. "Even though the legions don't do much fightin' these days – just sittin' and holdin' – a few still cross the lines to knock Ganon in the jaw."

"How's that?" I asked.

"Wellll, there's Sull Cooper an' his crew. They say he runs food n' clothing to the few folk still livin' in the occupied provinces. Then there's Captain Almadan – a smuggler before the war, they say. Since Ganon don't have no navy to speak of, Almadan makes raids up an' down the Torn Coast and whittles at the mobs from the east. It's said that Sir Enton Lomax ain't come back across the lines since the Battle o' the Titan. His men have dogged Ganon's troops even worse than the raiders hit us. Same with Count Brasco, the aeromancer – but now that I think about it, he's mostly in the west, around the Stony Vales."

"Tch," Ingo grunted. "Mercenaries and glory-seekin' fools. Ain't a proper soldier in the bunch, save Sir Enton."

Tash ignored his friend, continuing to tick off names by rote memory. "The lads o' the Fifth Legion make raids across the foothills, so I hear. An' then there's a fellow – a bandit, some say – that folk just call 'The Shiekah.' Heard a rumor that he took the head o' one o' the mob generals this summer. Ooh! And they say that there's a band o' zora led by one o' their princes – Lum or Tum or whatever fish-names those lot have – who swam upriver during last year's rains and have been drawin' blood ever since!"

This seemed to amuse him immensely. He laughed throatily, slapped his belly, and took a long swig from the wineskin. Tash proffered it to me as he wiped his lips with the back of a huge hand. I declined.

Shortly after the noon meal, I learned the proper use of a chamber pot. It was a humbling experience.

When we embarked again, I insisted on walking beside the wagon for a time. I needed to clear my head a bit after only a few pulls from that wineskin, and I figured a brisk walk would do the trick. After all, I was no stranger to traveling distances by foot – even though it had been some years since my days running cross-country.

Despite the wagon's decidedly ponderous pace, it still turned out to be a struggle to keep up. The duffle bag was not designed to be hauled great distances by hand and bumped awkwardly against me whenever I changed my stride. Eventually, I had to beat back my apprehension and hand the bag up to Malora so she could stow it beside her. Within fifteen minutes, the long-ignored muscles in my calves and feet began to tingle and ache. It was a dull, familiar pain that brought to mind running shorts, group drills, and cool autumn mornings. A face: Slim, tanned, and smiling. Jennifer.

Don't be a pussy, Linus. I bobbled on my heels as I went, trying to resurrect the old exercises and fall into proven movements. This was only walking. This was just a determined hike. How many miles had I moved at once in high school? How many miles of marathon had I run that first semester of college? This was nothing. This was just a smooth, nearly-level stroll through the countryside.

Then why did my Achilles tendons burn? Why did my hamstrings ache? I gritted my teeth as dust puffed up from the road with each footstep and powdered my already-filthy jeans. The plains rolled past me. I sweated and cursed the last four almost completely sedentary years.

After a time, the initial shock of stretching muscles evened out into a long subtle throb. My footsteps grew surer and more precise. Good. Good. This was good.

About an hour and a half after lunch, a low, churning rumble began in the north. At least, I thought it was the north – we had been following the highway so faithfully that I might have been fooled by its many curves and small turns. The sound grew with every step. At first, just a formless bass din, like the kind of thunder that never matches up with a flash of lightning . . . and then rising, approaching, and resolving itself into a storm of individual sounds: Horseshoes slamming hardpan; hot breath snorting out flared nostrils; the toneless metallic rattle of jostled steel.

I, the wagon, and our whole curious crew passed over a stunted rise in the road. Below, the highway dropped lazily into a shallow bowl dotted with ponds. About a half mile away, a column of horsemen charged down the highway toward us, growing larger and larger by the second. Though I kept moving, I watched intently as they came. I felt my steps grow slow and wooden.

I don't remember if I got a full count of the men that galloped past on their sleek, wiry mounts. Thirty, perhaps forty men at most. When their outriders saw us in the road, it only took a barked command to almost instantaneously reform the column into a tight, spear-like line down the opposite side of the highway. At their forefront rode a man in ornate plate armor covered in enameled scrollwork. A pole rose from a bolted sconce on the back of his armor, and from it fluttered a long, pale green banner. It followed him like the plume of some immense, fantastic bird of legend.

All of the other riders wore mail under doublets or padded tunics. A dozen shades of light green flew past. They carried spears and halberds, immense longbows, and quiver after quiver of arrows. I saw boomerangs, bolos, and snares attached to belts and hanging from their saddles.

Within the space of less than a minute, they were past.

"Were those . . .?" I craned my neck back to watch them pass over a rise in the road, hooves thundering.

"Light cavalry!" Ingo shouted. He walked backward now, in order to track the last of the riders as they disappeared. "Bearin' Lord Eldin's banner, too. Probably out lookin' for the same buggers that set on us yesterday."

The cloud of dust the riders had kicked up still lingered over the road. Light sparkled and danced among the falling motes. I stared after the vanished soldiers, wondering suddenly why I hadn't flagged them down and handed them the sword in my duffel bag. Here you are. You fuckers need this more than I do.

Soon after, Ingo called a short stop and I decided to retake my spot atop the bucket seat for a time. I relished the rest and laid my head back in blank-eyed silence.

Just as they had the day before, gray storm clouds grew on the horizon like the caps of some godlike fungus.

"Do you think it will rain?" I asked as I gazed west.

"Certainly hope so," Tash said. "It's gettin' on toward autumn an' the monsoon's late in comin'."

It was later, perhaps two or two-thirty by my vague reckoning, when I caught sight of the creature as it sunned itself atop a high rock. We were passing through a flat, open expanse of prairie whose surface flowed and rippled like a green tide. Shoots of grass as tall as a twelve-year old crowded to the edge of the road and seemed to sway in homage as we passed. Round blue flowers bobbed atop stems even taller than the wagon itself. Huge outcrops of banded gray stone stabbed up through the sea of green at random intervals. One of them, a jutting formation that looked like some snaggle tooth or talon, stood very close to the road. I didn't even notice the animal perched on its apex until it shifted position.

When it did, sunlight caught its pitted gray shell and summoned bands of strange, iridescent color. They played over its sharp curves and shone like foxfire, disappearing in an instant. About the size of a large cat or runty dog, the creature had a squashed, crablike appearance. A striped, tapering abdomen extended from the back of the main shell and looked more like the hind portions of an insect or spider than any crab that I knew.

As I cocked my head and leaned forward, two subtle plates of armor at the base of the creature's shell pulled apart and revealed a big, staring eye. At this distance, I could only see its hot, sapphire blue expression of interest. I suddenly was sure – absolutely _certain _– that its pupil would be bifurcated. A single, baleful eye in a bed of wet flesh. Some kind of octorock?

The wagon drew closer. I watched as the creature quivered and seemed to shrink back on itself. Plates of shiny gray chitin closed over its curious eyeball. It twitched. The creature's whole body shuddered, and I watched as eight powerful legs unfolded, flexed, and _sprung_. And at once, the creature was launching through the air, sailing in a graceful calculated arc, a mere silhouette against a porcelain sky. It fell like a skydiver, limbs spread out in some bastard semblance of exultation. There was a soft _swish_ as it passed through the surface of the ocean of grass. And then it was gone.

"Holy shit . . ." I whispered. Beside me, I heard Malora stifle a giggle. She was getting better at it.

Not an octorock. Familiar, though.

I struggled for the word. _Tektite. _Yes. Tektite. Pixilated versions of what I had just seen danced and leapt through my mind's eye.

"Was that . . ." I licked my lips and cleared my throat. "Was that a tektite?"

When I turned back to receive my companions' answer, I was greeted with looks of soft confusion. Malora still grinned slightly, as if she had just recalled some long-forgotten joke.

"Don't know what a tech-tie is, son," Tash said. "You have those about your parts? That there was a gohma. Maybe 'tektie' is another word for that?" He smiled encouragingly.

I felt my lips twist into a frown without even thinking about it. After a moment, I forced my face back into a more neutral expression. At least I knew what he was talking about, more or less.

"Oh, a _gohma_," I said, slathering mock realization over my voice. "Yeah, I heard about those. Like I said, it all mixes together. Don't know much about the animals here. We, uh, don't see many things like gohmas where I'm from. Mostly just, uh, coyotes and shit."

"What about tektites?" asked Malora. Hungry curiosity perked her features.

"I _said_ I was thinking of something else," I said brusquely. Too brusquely: Malora's eager expression collapsed like a swatted house of cards.

Fucking hell, you're terrible at this. Damage control, shithead.

"Uh, which is to say," I bumbled, "I'm really interested in hearing more. What the hell are they? Spiders?"

A familiar look passed over Malora's features. For a moment, I couldn't place it . . . and then realized that it was the same one she had given me the night before, when I had lost my shit under the demon face of the moon. "Not really," she said coolly. As she spoke, she seemed to relax a little. "They're more like octorocks or silver-skimmers. Do you know those?"

Unwilling to complicate things, I nodded.

"You don't see 'em much alone," Malora continued. "They mostly run in packs and stick to the river lands and hill country. That one didn't look so big. Probably young. Maybe a lone gohma, runnin' without a clan to call its own." For a single inscrutable moment, Malora's eyes narrowed. Her face went hard and solemn. She suddenly leaned back and rolled her neck, her hair drifting away in a red flood as she did. I heard something make an unsettling _pop_. When she opened her eyes and faced me, her voice was much cheerier. "Anyway, they're pretty harmless on their own. We have trouble with 'em on the ranch from time to time – comin' in at night an' makin' off with one o' the calves or the old milk cows. Two summers ago they got one o' Springleaf's newborn foals. Poor thing."

"Bunch o' buggerin' monsters. If I ever catch the one that did that, I'll dig out its eye with a hot poker – I swear to Din," Tash seethed. Obviously not a fan.

"What do _you _think about them, Ingo?" I asked, probing.

Ingo shrugged. "Ingo thinks they're right tasty. Especially with a bit o' cracked pepper and butter." His half-glimpsed smile summoned goose bumps across my forearms.

The rain passed over us mid-afternoon, turning the dusty highway into a stroke of moist clay. Even though the drizzle was warm and brief, it slowed the wagon's passage and covered my tennis shoes in drying brown splotches. I was walking again when it came, and hoisted myself back up onto the wagon when it became obvious that it was best to avoid the wet road. Ingo soldiered through it.

As thorough as the storm had been, its meager duration concerned Tash and Ingo. I listened to them banter back and forth about the possibility of a drought while marveling at the intense _greenness _of the surrounding plains. You want to see dry? Come to my part of the world, fellas. Come see the great concrete desert.

The highway, red and wet as an endless serpent's tongue, wove on. The air tasted of wet grass and strange pollen. There was a curious smell on the air – one that I associated with late summer in Minnesota.

A caravan of ten wagons crossed our path, moving through a small junction west to east. They bore the same green banner as the earlier cavalry. This one showed a device on its field of hazy green – a black falcon, one wing extended and a bundle of arrows clutched between its talons. One of the drovers tipped his wide-brimmed black hat to Tash and smiled toothlessly. And then they were on their way, and so were we.

It was a short time later that I noticed the next in the day's long line of small wonders. The marching lines of clouds between the sun and the horizon had given the light a soft, dim hue. Despite the fact that it was only beginning to edge toward late afternoon, everything east of the highway seemed bathed in twilight. The plains in that direction worked themselves up in grudging folds, forming the periphery of what appeared to be a sparsely-wooded bit of hill country. As I looked that direction, distant clouds must have parted and let loose the sun's full bounty. I stared in amazement.

Graceful, rounded shapes rose just above the eastern horizon. Their sides glimmered shades of wet green and deep gold in the light of afternoon. The road took a turn and climbed, directing the wagon toward this sudden apparition. The shapes gained depth and focus, resolving into exquisitely sculpted towers and sleek ramparts. They jumbled and flowed together seemingly at random. Every surface shimmered as if it were covered in a thin layer of water.

As the strange structure grew larger and larger, I heard Tash mutter, "Good. Good. Not far now."

I was slightly disappointed when the highway swung back and dropped into a northerly line between the hills. Though the jewel-like towers stayed in view, it was obvious that the road wouldn't take us directly past them.

Before I could ask what I was looking at, Malora piped up. She was starting to anticipate my blank moments. "That's a fairy colony out there. Which one is it, father? I can't remember the name."

Tash grumbled, "Bruuvas Colony, was it? I think that's the one. Means we're not that far out from Oloro."

"Fairies?"

"Aye. If we're lucky, we'll make it down the – oh bleeding bloody hell."

Up ahead, a trio of glowing orbs floated gracefully through the air. They swooped down the road toward us, coming fast. I blinked, and suddenly they were almost on top of us. Ingo swore beneath his breath and Malora groaned.

They were all a pulsing blue, each a different shade and intensity than the others. The wisp in the center had a curious green tint to it, like sea foam. It traveled above a huge dark object that I had somehow missed – perhaps in the instant of shocked recognition as they had first appeared. It took a moment to realize what that object was: A heavy wooden trunk, lacquered black and gold. Two of the balls of blue light hovered on either side of it, its handles outstretched. I blinked again, heard the oxen grunt and chuff in irritation, and before I knew it that dark trunk floated no more than four feet from where I sat. It bobbed back through the air in perfect synch with the still-moving wagon. Soft neon light shone along its painted edges.

"Hello sirs!" a smooth, quick voice called, "And hello, maiden! Pujho Pyal is the name, and fine crafted wares are my game! Care for a souvenir from your visit to fairy country?"

I realized that I was gaping like an idiot. Up this close, the air around each incandescent orb shimmered like a heat mirage. When I looked directly at them, the shifting blue light dimmed considerably. Within those fields of starry blue and rippling green, I saw . . . tiny men. Each stood perhaps five or six inches tall – larger than they first seemed. They had thin, spindly bodies and vague faces that were featureless but for large, dark eyes. Crystalline wings sprouted from their shoulders and beat the air in furious silver-white blurs.

Fairies. Real fairies. Jesus Christ. Jesus fucking Christ on a bicycle! The grin came on unbidden. I felt light-headed.

"Urrr, nothin' for us, thank you kindly," I heard Tash say.

The two fairies to either side of the traveling case were, so far as I could tell, naked. They each held one of the trunk's leather handles in their tiny arms. Their wings fluttered more or less lazily, as if it didn't take much effort for either of them to keep their cargo afloat and to match the pace of the wagon. Tufts of gossamer hair sprouted from their heads. Both watched us with emotionless, alien eyes.

"Oh, sir! You don't know what you're missing!" Pujho Pyal purred. He was the third fairy – the one hovering above the trunk. When I turned my eyes to him, I very nearly burst into uncontrollable laughter.

Pujho Pyal was as ostentatious as the two other fairies were unadorned. At the heart of his radiant field of blue-green, he wore what looked like a set of doll's clothes. A black suit hung off his delicate frame, threadbare at the seams. A little black cravat wrapped about his neck. Most absurdly, a teeny-tiny top hat perched on his head at a jaunty angle. His skin was smooth, lustrous silver and his eyes were pools of liquid gold. When he spoke, I saw small lips part as if from behind a wall of television static.

"Good sir! Fine sir!" he barked. "You don't want to miss out on these amazing deals. Why, let me show you . . ." The fairy darted forward with a low, airy hum. The brass clasps on the front of the trunk popped up even as Tash was making an unintelligible noise of disapproval. Pujho pulled back the lid of the trunk to reveal an interior lined with patchy red velvet and filled to the brim with an incredible (and incomprehensible) array of knickknacks.

Clutching his top hat, Pujho dove into the open case and emerged holding what appeared to be a clay disc, painted green and stamped with the same falcon symbol we had seen on the banners of the caravan. "How about one of our famous 'Eldin Charms,' sir?" he said enthusiastically. "Also available as a pendant! Perfect for warding off shades and ghasts. I'm givin' it to you for my special out-of-towner price – eight rupees!"

"No, no," Tash said exhaustedly.

There was something . . . peculiar . . . about the way the fairy spoke. He began to swing in and out of the chest with alarming rapidity, emerging with some trinket or another. His voice was loud, strong, and slightly boyish. There was a soft, almost inaudible buzz to it, especially around the consonants. But, the more I concentrated on the words, the more a sliver of pain began to work its way into the space behind my eyes. I found that the effect increased as I stared hard at the fairies themselves, taking them in from head to almost-invisible toes. Along with the pain came an eerie sensation – like staring into the sun too long, or squinting at one of those hidden 3-D pictures.

"Dude, it is not too late to check out our awesome line of merchandise!" Suddenly, Pujho Pyal bobbed about a foot from my face. He held out a necklace of stone beads on a coiled hemp string – the kind of thing that would not be at all out of place in any den of pot smoking hippies.

"What?" I managed.

"We have some fantastic shit here, amigo. You should check it out!" The fairy seemed to lean back, pleased with itself.

"What did you just call me?" I murmured.

"Amigo? You look like an 'amigo,' man. Like a pretty cool dude."

My skull suddenly felt about three sizes too small. My vision swam. I ran my fingers through my hair. Suddenly I was back in California, haggling with the owner of the local head shop.

"Naw," I finally croaked. "Naw, I'm good. Don't have any money on me, anyway."

The fairy in the top hat fluttered upward and considered me with golden eyes. "That's a fuckin' shame, brah. But it's cool. It's cool. Just come back and see me next time you roll through!" Pujho Pyal tossed the necklace back in the trunk, slammed the lid shut, and turned to his fairy companions. "C'mon," he hissed. "These deadbeats can't see a good deal even when it's shining in their faces."

He bowed in midair, then took off across the road with his comrades and his trunk in hot pursuit. I twisted around to watch the three of them become spheres of colored light, sailing back down the highway. Soon enough, the road curved around a hillside and they were gone.

A few minutes of uncomfortable silence later, Malora ventured, "First time with fairies?"

I rubbed my forehead. A phantom ache still crawled somewhere between the bridge of my nose and my hairline. "Yeah."

She smiled wanly. "They take some getting used to. Anything as magical as they are does." She paused, pursing her lips. "You look like you seen your mother crawling out of her grave."

Best just bite the bullet. I said, "He talked just like someone from . . . from my part of the world."

Malora nodded. "Aye. Don't fret over it, though. Everyone hears fairies a bit different than everyone else. It's part o' their magic. Uma told me once that they can't speak normal Hylian. Not really. So they use some kind o' magic to make it sound like they do." She grimaced a bit. "It's a bit unnerving the first time."

No shit.

Tash hunched over and made a sour expression. "Nayru take those bugs. Bunch o' cheats and liars, the lot of 'em. I always feel like somethin's walked over my grave after talkin' to 'em."

"Oh, father," Malora sighed. "They aren't that bad." She didn't sound as if she was very committed to what she was saying.

The sky was just beginning to pull the cloak of sunset over its shoulders when we came in sight of Oloro Town. The plains evened out and began a slow climb up to a distant ridgeline. Spikes of black rock sprouted along the highway, twisting and clawing into the air like petrified gouts of fire. When the wagon reached the top of the rise, I felt my breath catch. I let it out through my nostrils in a thin whine.

A great, circular valley stretched for miles below a curved ridge of volcanic rock. Its relatively flat bottom was divided by roads, fields, and the green tufts of flowering trees. At the center of the valley sat an ovoid blob of buildings, hemmed in on all sides by a rock wall and slapdash stockades of raw timber. Tendrils of smoke and steam rose from tiny chimneys. From here, it all looked like some kind of half-assed diorama or matte painting.

It needed no introduction: This was the day's destination. Tash said a few brief, exhausted words, consulted with Ingo, and then started the wagon down a series of switchbacks. It was about a five or six hundred foot drop from the top of the ridge to the bottom. The highway narrowed and wound its way past snarls of volcanic glass and cracked basalt boulders. Hardy trees spread from the valley wall like daredevil climbers. When we passed beneath their ropy canopies, I smelled something thick and vital, like pine sap mixed with oleander.

The floor of the valley was much vaster than it had appeared from above. Once we hit bottom, it seemed to open up and yawn out from horizon to horizon. Smaller roads and tracks branched off the highway, stabbing out toward the dark, distant ridges. There were stone silos perched above elevated fields of swaying wheat and barley. Some miles from the road I saw perfect lines of trees that had to be orchards. The sun shone yellow and umber across the surfaces of what looked like vast rice paddies, sunk away below the roads.

"They seem to grow a lot," I said dully.

"They do. It's good soil. Very good," Malora said, nodding

"Too bad they gotta divert all their water from rivers outside the valley!" Ingo grumbled.

Malora made a face at his back.

The town grew as well. Those toy buildings suddenly stood up to heights of three and even four stories. The ramshackle wall surrounding the town, all timber palisades and huge blocks of quarried stone, took on a more forbidding face as we approached. It suddenly stretched much farther than I had first thought. The highway cut right into the middle of it, disappearing between two rough but spectacularly thick gates. I saw the faces of sentries prowling the walls and watching with vultures' eyes from half-hidden watchtowers.

No wonder: Among the rows and roads were the black, moss-dappled skeletons of buildings that had burned down to their foundations some time ago. One of the great silos on a side road was pockmarked and half-collapsed. I didn't need to ask the Lons to know that Oloro town had known the touch of Ganon's southern raiders. Now they were taking no chances.

Below the walls of Oloro, to either side of the road, were yet more of the flooded rice paddies. Down in the paddies, women in broad straw hats worked in even, regimented lines. They stood up to their thighs in bright water. Their instruments rose and fell in neat procession. The sun saturated the waters and painted their silhouettes with fire. On our approach, I heard a raucous gale of laughter, the quick and unintelligible babble of delighted conversation. Still the tools arced and fell, black lines on liquid flame. One of the voices suddenly rose above the others and I caught words – sung words – and quickly lost them. All that was left was their music.

And soon enough, other voices joined the first – uncertain, then in harmony. Some smooth as olive oil and others growling and toneless. Some shrill, some melodious. In the end, they all wove together in a single sinuous tongue, familiar and yet so foreign. It rose up and flowed over the highway – inundating it, smothering it, swallowing it.

The wagon neared the town. About us, the highway grew crowded with people eager to end their day within the Oloro's walls.

At first, I thought a pair of squat alabaster gargoyles flanked the gates. It was only after a half-minute of surreal study – and when one of them blinked – that I realized that I was looking at two immense, gray-white gorons. Both of them stood over six feet tall and had faces like monuments abandoned during the early stages of their sculpting. They wore nothing but dusty loincloths and gripped lances that were half-again as tall as they were.

Goron bodies were strange things. On their backs were banded, iron gray shells that resembled nothing so much as bloated pill bugs. That same chitinous material spread in patches across their shoulders, knees, and underbelly. Their skin – if it was, strictly speaking, _skin_ – looked like pale patent leather that had recently had a thorough oiling. There was something about them that felt papery and sterile.

Above the tumult, the women's song rose and conquered. As I stared bug-eyed at the goron sentries, its melody surrounded me like a warm shroud and made me go pleasantly numb. When one of the huge guards nodded at me with eyes as utterly black as crude oil, I smiled dreamily and returned the gesture.

With the work song still flowing back and forth in my ears, we passed through the gates and into Oloro Town.


	8. 8

**8**

Hot, sharp steam scents drifted along the avenue to greet us. Something boiled and something burned; something stewed and something soaked in scalding water. Harsh soap and something like sweet onions. Laundry, wood fires, and evening meals set to cook in clay ovens. Wet smells, though not unpleasant. And laced through it all was a scurrying tinge of sulfur – just barely there, like a sleek yellow cat constantly underfoot but ever unseen.

Oloro opened up before us like a jumble of blocks left behind by some giant child. The highway transformed into an avenue paved with smooth cobblestones. It twisted to the right, disappearing from view behind a stout, mud-brick structure whose walls were painted blue. Buildings lined the street like a throng of gawkers at a parade, dressed in all the multitudinous finery of the world. Shops, houses, taverns, storerooms, and hovels. Most had timber frames and rough adobe walls. Some boasted foundations of dark brick or mortared stone. Fiery dusk light shone on roofs covered with wooden shingles, slabs of slate, and intricate clay tile.

The wagon thumped and stuttered beneath us as its wheels struck cobblestones. At once, Tash pulled back on the reins. He waved to Ingo, who shimmied close to the oxen and took charge of leading them down the street. My teeth rattled in their sockets as we bumped on our way, passing down between open stalls and cracked doors, deep into the belly of Oloro.

The turn in the road widened almost immediately into an open, semi-circular town square. Tall, solid buildings surrounded the vast space. Subsidiary streets and alleys burrowed between them, slashing off into the unseen recesses of the town. All about the square were stalls and the open-air entrances to shops, their proprietors sitting and shouting and smoking beneath brightly-colored cloth awnings. The whole of the place milled with the evening's crowds – farmhands returning home for the night, local merchants calling the day's last bargains, children scurrying at play and on errands, and at least a dozen obvious travelers that wandered slowly and anxiously through the throng. At the middle of the tumult sat a round, stepped platform of deep gray stone. From my vantage point atop the wagon, I could see that it actually contained a pool of intensely blue water. Wisps of steam rose from the surface of the water, urged on by a gentle, constant bubbling at the pool's center.

The wagon pulled off to the side of the avenue as we entered the open space of the square. Once stopped, I goggled at the sights and murmured, "It's a lot bigger than it looked outside."

"Aye," Malora agreed. She stretched, eyed me for a moment, and made a shooing motion. Ah: She wanted me to climb down off the wagon. I stiffly obliged her.

"Well, here we are!" Tash announced. He swept a hand across the busy market square. "What do you think of Oloro Town, lad? She ain't Hylium, but she's impressive all the same. Ain't it?"

A pair of tall draft horses plodded past and into the plaza, pulling a buckboard heaped with parcels. They were driven by an expressionless goron, naked but for an ostentatious, wide-brimmed blue hat.

"It's certainly something," I said absently. My free hand slid over my duffle bag and pulled it closer to my body.

"I've always liked Oloro," Malora said. She surveyed the town approvingly. Her body rocked back and forth as she looked, obviously charged with repressed excitement. "Like father said, it ain't even a fraction o' Hylium, but it ain't got any o' Hylium's problems neither. The food's always good, there's plenty o' things to see an' do if you're just passing, and the bathhouse is just about the best in all o' Hyrule." She suddenly stopped moving, a look of mild concern clouding her features. "We are still going to the bathhouse, aren't we father?"

Tash leaned from the bucket seat and said, "O' course, Malon dear. Ain't a trip to Oloro without a soak in the baths." He glanced at me cordially and asked, "Fancy a dip, Linus? I know you ain't got no glitter on ya', but I'll be glad to pay your way. It's fine hot springs water, you know. Comes up from the ground all but boilin'."

I glanced at the steaming pool in the middle of the plaza. My forehead screwed up in thought. "Is that what's causing that stink? I mean – the sulfur smell?"

Tash leaned forward and sniffed, as if to test my claim. "Oh, that little whiff o' brimstone? Aye. Oloro's built over a whole mess o' springs, bubblin' up from somethin' called a, uh, cul-something-or-another."

"It's called a caldera!" Ingo yelled from the other side of the oxen. "Like the top o' a big volcano that's still underground, and ain't been birthed yet."

Raising an eyebrow, Tash said, "Yes. That. A bit bothersome to think about, aye, but who can argue with all that nice hot water and rich soil? Anyway – I'll go ahead and buy us all a bath, and then a bit o' dinner . . ."

"At the Burning Brand!" Malora all but bounced with enthusiasm.

" . . . And a nice feather bed. Who says travelin's gotta be a bother?"

"I, um," I said. "That's very nice of you. Thanks? I mean – thank you. I'd like that." Truth be told, I was still grappling with the idea that I was – more or less – standing on top of an unexploded volcano.

"Aye, aye, aye. A fine and merry time for all." Ingo shuffled into view, shouldering a rough knapsack as he came. "Let's get on with it. Ingo wants his bath too, by Din. But before that, he needs to drop by the garrison, an' show off that fine trophy he took."

My face twisted. "You mean that moblin ear?"

Ingo made a sound that was more like a territorial bark than a laugh. "Oh, aye! Been a bounty out on any snouts in the provinces for a while now. A fellow can make a respectable sum with a few scalps, heads, or ears."

I nodded, despite the sour sensation that suddenly flooded my stomach.

"Ingo," Tash sighed, "must you do that now?"

The farmhand shrugged. "Garrison quartermaster's likely to be out courtin' a bottle after the sun goes down. And Ingo ain't gonna wait around long enough for him to open his doors tomorrow mornin'."

"I may need your help with the wagon – not to mention the oxen."

"Well enough – Ingo'll meet you at the livery. How's about you grab rooms at the inn in the meantime?" The tall man let a perturbed, vaguely paternal look wrinkle his features.

Seemingly satisfied with this compromise, Tash waved his colleague on his way. "Go on, then. You know where to meet me, o' course."

With a nod and a slight bounce in his uneven step, Ingo set off across the square. Within moments, he blended through the crowd and vanished down one of Oloro's side streets. I watched him go with that vaguely ill feeling still crawling about the roof of my belly.

My focus on Ingo's limping path was such that I didn't notice that Malora had sidled up next to me and was regarding the bag slung across my shoulder with curious interest. She caught my look as I caught hers. She nodded. For no reason whatsoever, I nodded back. Oh, that awkward moment when confusion, emotion, and one's best intentions cross wires.

"Father, is it all right if Linus and I go to look for a laundry?"

Still perched up in the driver's seat, Tash muttered to himself as he consulted a yellowish parchment he had produced while my eyes were turned. When he heard his daughter's voice, he looked up with an expression of abject bewilderment. "Eh? What's that?"

Malora smiled warmly, seemingly as wide as possible. She folded her arms behind her back and said, "Linus's clothes got all messed up in that fight yesterday. I told him we'd find him a laundry to clean 'em up once we got to Oloro Town." She threw a glance my way, and there was mischief there. When she moved her gaze back to her father, the look melted away instantly. A carefully composed . . . well, it wasn't a mask, really. Something like a mask, slipped on easily and with little preparation. The loving, innocent daughter. A face for all seasons.

I felt a moment of unease. No – she was not a flake. Not at all. Jesus.

As Tash considered this, a flight of birds took wing above town and turned to ornaments of red gold in the falling light. Their shadows swept across our faces.

"Pleeeease?" Malora crooned.

"That's probably not –" I stammered.

"Fine, fine," Tash sighed. "Just be sure to meet me at the bathhouse in an hour or so. Don't go dallyin'." The rancher turned his gaze on me. Though he smiled, those dark brown eyes were blank. "You keep my daughter in line, now. No flirtin' with the local boys, like I caught 'er doing last time we came this way."

"Father!" Malora's ingratiating expression vanished between heartbeats. Her hands curled into embarrassed, petulant fists.

So much for the master of disguise, I mused.

I wasn't sure whether I should be irritated or impressed by Tash's breezily passive reaction. "Now Malon, my dear."

"Don't –!" she hissed.

"Oh, come off it," Tash chuffed. He flailed the reins and urged the oxen into a slow clop across the street. I began to follow, noticed that Malora wasn't moving, hesitated, and then started after anyway. A moment later, Malora stomped into my peripheral vision with a determined glower.

"We will meet you in an hour, _father_," Malora barked.

Lips pursed and brow furrowed, Tash called out, "Oh, don't go running off angry!"

"I'm not angry!" Malora shot back. She suddenly peeled away from the wagon's path, without as much as a nod. Another moment of awkward indecision followed. I caught Tash's worried face, stopped, ran a little, stumbled, and then skirted two chattering old women to catch up to Malora. I left the anchoring presence of the wagon behind for the first time since stepping through the alley and into the plains of Eldin Province.

The crowd, while not shoulder to shoulder, was thick and chaotic enough that I had a panicked few seconds in which I couldn't find Malora. A whirl of cloaks, hats, robes, tunics, and garments that looked for all the world like Mexican serapes. Blue, white, gray, stripes of earthen red and brown. Many shades of green. My lungs shuddered and my belly knotted. Where had she gone?

And then, like a burst of fire, she appeared by my side. She held a lingering frown. "Come on," Malora said. She took off toward the boiling basin, all but snatching back a hand and dragging me.

"I swear that he _means_ to shame me like that," she grumbled.

That's pretty much the point, I thought. Already confused and turned around enough, I once again decided to soft-play the issue. I tentatively said, "I'm pretty sure he means well."

"Does he?" Malora snapped. She whirled on me, cheeks very nearly as red as her hair. My legs bumbled on twisting feet as I skidded to a halt.

A goron with skin the color of granite stopped to look at us. Liquid sloshed noisily back and forth in the barrel strapped to its back. Two men in peasants' clothing, axes slung across their shoulders, paused in their conversation as they dodged about us.

"Hey now . . ." I sputtered. My hands rose defensively.

Malora stabbed a finger at me. "Don't tell me you're taking his side!"

What had once been a mélange of confusion, embarrassment, and half-hearted pity evaporated into straight anger. What was this happy horseshit?! I hadn't done anything to deserve this. As ever it was when my emotions ran hot, my lips were moving long before my brain could catch up.

"Hey, what the fuck?" I growled.

The goron blinked. Its eyelids made a damp clicking sound.

Before me, Malora looked like she had just been stunned with a blow to the head. The flush remained beneath her freckles. She said nothing.

Part of me tried to retreat then – to apologize, shrink back, and say nothing more. Another part wanted to surge forth, howling and snarling with every mishmash emotion that had bombarded me in the past day and a half. Neither side won, really. The stalemate summoned empty, frustrated gestures from my raised hands.

"How long have you known me, Malora?" I asked. Chafing under the gaze of the spectator goron, I slowly started walking toward the raised pool. A wet, sulfurous stink began to claw at my nostrils.

Malora followed tentatively. "No more than a day."

"Right. Exactly. So, why would I have any reason to take a fucking side here?"

"I don't know." Her voice grew stronger, surer. "But that's what it sounded like! You don't know how he can get. For a man with three daughters, he is far too protective of me. He treats me like a child. He insists on nosin' into my business, even though I'm, for all intents and purposes, a grown woman!" Malora sighed, hissed, or both. "And when he does, I become . . ."

"Bitchy?"

"Don't be crude, Linus."

"Call a spade a spade." I looked back at her, saw the slow rage in her features, and felt the fire behind my tongue diminish. "Sorry. But you do have to admit that –"

"I become a bitch when angered?" Dripping, venomous sarcasm.

I stopped in my tracks. We were very near the base of the pool monument now, away from the milling feet and curious eyes of the market crowd. Sunset poured across the cobbles like molten bronze. Shadows fell away from the buildings like cool slices of expatriate night. Malora stood looking at me with narrowed eyes.

"It doesn't seem normal for you," I began. "Most of the time, you seem pretty together."

Her eyelids fluttered. "What do you mean by that?"

"Look: Like I said, we haven't known each other very long. We're barely acquaintances, really. But I think I've seen enough of you over the last day to know that you're not some airheaded bimbo who lets herself get pissed when Daddy tells her to keep away from those nasty boys."

"I don't know what half o' that means, Linus."

I shrugged. "You seem more composed than all that. Like you know what you're doing. So when you lose your temper like this, it's more than a little weird, okay?"

For this, Malora had no immediate rejoinder. Her eyes fell and swept the ground at her feet. She sighed loudly. Her lips twitched, and she looked back up. "I suppose I should thank you for that. It is a compliment, is it not?"

"Yeah."

She folded her arms and said, "Thank you, then. Thank you. But . . ." she bit her lower lip and paused. "You have it right when you say you don't know me. You don't. And I don't know you, Linus. I don't even know your family name."

"Olsen."

"What?"

It was my turn to examine my shoes. I murmured, "My last name. It's Olsen."

Neither of us spoke, then. We looked at each other, our hands, the cobbles beneath our feet. Somewhere in the plaza, a woman's booming voice called out fine deals (very fine deals) on pickled eggs, rice cakes, and sweet branna. The pool burbled quietly to itself.

"It's a fine name," Malora said suddenly. I could barely hear her, she was so quiet.

"How's that?"

"I like it. Your family name. Is it noble?"

"What do you mean?" I shifted the weight on my feet uncomfortably.

"Is your family of the gentry? A noble house?"

I shrugged and nervously scratched at my cheek. "No. I mean – I don't think so. I doubt it."

"Th-that's good." She let off a quavering little laugh. Malora's body swayed side-to-side, arms folded across her chest as if she felt a sudden chill. "Nobles are usually pretty insufferable, anyway."

Though the quiet that followed was short, it was no less uneasy than before. When I spoke, it was with considerable effort. "I'm sorry I snapped at you."

Malora weakly waved a hand and said, "Oh, it ain't as if I didn't deserve it. I let him vex me and I forgot myself. I apologize as well."

I nodded. "We both acted like asses."

She frowned. "If you insist. I just . . ." Malora puffed her cheeks out and looked at me with a cocked eye. "I just was so excited to show you about the town. I don't lie when I say that I enjoy Oloro quite a bit. And then Father had to go and . . ." She trailed off.

"I understand," I said. "So."

"Yes."

"You were going to take me to a laundry or something?"

"Oh." Malora's expression brightened by turns as she spoke. "I mean – aye! Indeed." She turned about, taking in the square as if it were the first time she had really looked. "To be honest," she said, "I don't really know where one is." Her smile was sheepish but genuine.

"I _think_ there is one just off the square, but I've never had to use it." She tilted her head back, thinking. "How about this: I'll go n' take a look, see if I can't find the place, I can meet you over at that big pavilion over there." Malora stretched up on tiptoes and pointed toward a large, yellow and white-striped awning that stretched out from the foot of a building of painted mud bricks.

I considered this, turning over a half-dozen nightmare scenarios that might spring from it, and finally nodded. "I guess that will work."

"Good. Good! Don't wander too far. I won't be long." Malora took a step, stopped, flashed me a reassuring smile, and then was off. Her gait quickened into jackrabbit bounds, until at last I saw only her flashing red hair as it bobbed through the plaza. And all at once, I was alone.

A tiny flutter in my chest: Old Friend Panic, turning over and opening one bloodshot eye.

All around me were strange faces, strange sights, strange smells. Coming and going, going and coming. Like a huge, cobbled anthill . . . and scuttling through it weren't just people, but _things_. From my spot in the center of the plaza, I could pick out the bulbous, shelled backs of at least four or five gorons. When I looked at them as they stomped casually through the square and haggled with vendors in low tones, my temples began to throb.

It's a new day, Linus. The dream is over. Rise up, rub your eyes, and face the waking world. What once was fantasy now stands before you, fleshy and stinking. No retreat. No turning back.

I girded myself, sucked in a breath full of alien spice and brimstone, and started toward the distant pavilion.

The crowd had thinned somewhat in the awkward minutes spent talking in the middle of the square. I made my way cautiously between passing men and women as if I were entering some antediluvian jungle. A horse, looking bored and anxious as its master chatted with a passerby, whickered at me in irritation as I dodged around it. Bright lights of green and indigo flashed across my eyes; a pair of erratic glowing sparks shot past my shoulder. Fairies, darting among the crowd like foxfire.

Yelling, whispering, giggling, whining. Polite conversation, entreaties to move, requests to buy, guttural mumbling.

I all but leapt over a pile of fresh, greenish-black dung. I banked right and almost plowed into three young men in armored breastplates, conversing so intensely that they never saw me coming. I wheeled; I stumbled; I bounded ahead. I slipped around a resting buckboard, sidled past a lumpy canvas tent, and suddenly found myself a short jaunt from the pavilion selected by Malora.

It was a big, slapdash thing – a kind of open-stall, all-comers shop that spilled out from beneath the vast striped awning in semi-ordered rows. A cacophony of boxes, sacks, baskets, and wicker cages sat on tables and in piles upon the ground. Undulating waves of barnyard smells and noises projected from the place like a proclamation. Shapes skittered, danced, and glowered through the jumble of pens and cages.

A short, distinctly fat man with jowls and spiky cheek stubble stood watch at the edge of the pavilion. He wore a loose, striped tunic and a little black skullcap that resembled a yarmulke. Hands held behind his ample backside, he eyed me with obvious interest as I neared his little dominion.

I halted before the first table of goods, feeling uncomfortable under the persistent gaze of the shopkeeper. As he shuffled ponderously over to me, I tried to look interested in a row of glazed clay jars. When he reached my shoulder, he smiled ingratiatingly and raised a hand in welcome.

"See anything you like, sir?"

I shifted the duffle and said, "Uh. No. I mean – sorry – I'm just browsing. Thanks."

The fat man's grin twitched at the edges. "Looking for anything in particular?"

This close, I could smell him. God, it was like . . . beets. He smelled like pickled beets. I tried to feign apathy and looked out past the man's shoulder, into the shady depths of the pavilion.

Far under the shadow of the awning sat a woman, hunched in a wicker chair. Despite the slow heat of early evening, her body was wrapped tightly in a cloak and shawl. The skin of her face was thin as rice paper and pulled taut over the visible bones of her skull. Her eyes were wide and her mouth hung open with big, yellowed teeth. A dull, painful stare: The look of something twisted and terminal. I quickly turned away to look back at the merchant's wares.

"Um. Uh," I coughed. "Frankly man, I'm just killing time here."

The bulbous, hairy cheeks quivered. The shopkeeper's eyes narrowed. "Are you certain? I carry a most excellent variety of house wares, feeds, and animals both banal and exotic." He jabbed a hand at a row of wares beyond the table – the piled cages containing any number of unseen and clearly irritated animals. "For instance, I just today came into possession of a litter of vale hound pups. Can I not interest you in a companion of such grace and loyalty?"

An unfortunate elixir of embarrassment and annoyance began to pour down my spine. I shook my head after a moment. "Just looking. Really."

He persisted. "Are you in town on business? Passing through? Are you a magician or alchemist, perhaps?"

I moved to round the display table and get a better look at the animals. Much to my chagrin, the merchant followed.

"I have never seen a rune like that." He pointed a stubby finger at the Nike symbol plastered across the side of my bag. "What does it mean?"

It means, "Fuck off," you twit. Can't you take a goddamn hint? I dodged around a wire cage containing what appeared to be a mess of purple-shelled crabs. I went deeper into the shop pavilion. Anything to lose this guy.

I found myself standing before a row of small, stacked wooden pens. Swift, jerky shadows moved back and forth within them with an air of impatience. Something made a noise that was half wet hiss, half throaty clicking sound. An unsettlingly dry, alkaline scent hung in the air like a dust cloud. I could sense the proprietor bumbling his way behind me for yet more of his delightful brand of customer service.

"Sir . . . ?"

For fuck's sake!

"Ah! Here you are!"

A short, slender form approached from my right, between the rows of cages and sundry wares. Oh thank Christ. Malora. She strode to my side with a growing quizzical look.

The merchant greeted her jovially and asked her, more or less, the same questions he had bombarded me with. I was glad to see that Malora looked – despite her carefully-cultivated facial expressions – as increasingly uncomfortable as I had under the rotund man's attentions. I was just beginning to feel sorry when she finally said none too curtly, "I apologize, good sir – but my cousin and I have business to attend to and not much time to attend to it. I bid you good day." She executed what had to be a mocking approximation of a curtsy, and then gestured for him to leave.

When the shopkeeper had turned dolefully from earshot, I whispered, "Cousin?"

Malora shrugged. "A little more proper than 'companion' and less suspicious than 'brother.'"

I felt a momentary chill. Was that how she saw me? Like some kind of fugitive, to be hidden and shuttled from sight under a veil of lies?

No matter. She was right on both counts, for both our sakes. "What if he had, uh, noticed the lack of family resemblance? You know – the ears?" As I spoke, I walked closer to the piled pens, curious about the pacing forms within. I leaned close and peered through the rough slats of the nearest enclosure.

Bands of light and shadow, black on umber, fell across the shape within. Something white and hunched shifted position at my approach. A lithe body, uncurling as if from boredom or sleep. A slanted bar of gold light glimmered on the surface of a dark, angry eye. I moved closer.

All at once: A hiss; a shudder; a blur of red and white; tiny razor teeth snapping out through the pen. Something between a beak and a pointed snout shot out and snapped at my face like an organic buzz saw.

"Holyfuckinghell what is that?!"

I hopped back just in time to feel the slash of hot air as the creature bit repeatedly at the spot just recently occupied by my nose. I stumbled back and almost fell over an empty basket coated with dry guano. Malora's delighted, borderline-sadistic laughter filled my ears.

Though it had stopped its hideous trills and tiny screeches, the horrible little thing bobbed its head just outside the cage. Its glassy black eyes regarded me balefully. The creature was, at first glance, very like a bird. Ratty white feathers tipped with brick red covered its body and neck. I could see wings folded against its sides and the blunt plumes of tail-feathers. Everything else about it was disturbingly reptilian, even saurian, in construction. The head that held the half-beak, half- razor-filled-maw had the look of a lizard crossed with some long-headed bird of prey. Its legs were black and pebbled, ending in sharp, tough little talons.

A word, forgotten almost since the days of elementary school when all little boys love dinosaurs, came to me unbidden: _Archaeopteryx_. Yes. A dozen artists' interpretations colorfully flipped through my skull. The thing before me was not quite like those illustrations of old – it was too ragged, too short, too ugly – but it fit the bill close enough.

It raised one of its slashing feet, scratched at the pen, and squawked.

"Fuck me!" I breathed. Malora let loose another barely-suppressed guffaw. "What the fuck is so funny?" I groaned. "That fucker almost took off my nose!"

"Hahaha!" Malora put her hand in front of her mouth in some feeble, half-hearted attempt to be polite. "Oh Linus," she giggled. "Oh. Never mind your funny ears. I think he'd have noticed that you ain't ever seen a cuccoo first!"

"What."

She pointed at the dinosaur-bird before me and said, "That. It's a common cuccoo. Looks like a mean little hen, aye, but it ain't anything special."

Something like vertigo, washing through my skull in a numbing tide. "I thought that they, I mean, cuccoos . . ." Malora looked at me expectantly. I glanced at the feathery horror before me. "I thought they were like, you know, birds. Like chickens." The penned cuccoo ruffled up its dirty red-on-white plumage, hissed bellicosely, and then turned back into its cage. No. No, that is not a cuccoo. That is a fucking velociraptor.

Malora shook her head slowly. Her smile seemed less ingratiating and pedantic than before. Now it seemed . . . pitying? Christ, I hoped not.

"Nay. Ain't like birds, really. Sort of, but mostly aren't. They're an odd sort, to be sure. Fine meat and fine eggs, and they make good rat-catchers out in the yards. You just gotta be careful with 'em, as most o' the time they're vicious little buggers. The cocks get big as a dog and can be right awful during breedin' season."

She tilted her head to the side a little and narrowed her eyes. Several strands of hair fell across her face. Before she spoke again, she brushed them away irritably. "Linus, what's a . . . what's a chick-un?"

I laughed despondently.


	9. 9

**9**

We took off from the pavilion at a leisurely pace. Malora led the way, having indeed found the laundry that she thought she had seen on a previous visit. It was a brief jaunt onto one of the side streets that branched off the plaza. Here, the crowds milling about the open shops and taverns bled away into sparse groups as they made their way through the dusk-lit streets. It was close enough to the center of activity to still be fairly busy, but just enough off the beaten path to be quieter and far less hectic. The rush and chatter of the square faded to a distant, constant murmur.

The buildings here were shorter and seemed more solid than those on the edge of town; most were of painted brick and had clay tiled rooftops. Some resembled small brownstone houses; others were single-story shops already closed or closing for the evening. I glanced at the stone stoop of one of the houses and saw what I thought was a lazing dog on the doorstep. It raised its head to watch us pass, revealing a cat the size and color of a young golden retriever. A moment of confused panic hurried me along my way.

"Here we are," Malora soon announced. We had not gone far; no wonder it had taken her so little time to return from her scouting mission. The two of us came to a halt before a wide two-story building, built with brick and painted red. An incomprehensible (but well-stenciled) sign hung over the open door. Strong scents – a spiraling mixture of perfume and sharp chemicals – floated through the doorway on a current of hot wet air. Sulfur lurked underneath it all, quiet and ever-present.

I stared up at the sign bleakly. Malora must have seen me doing so, because she said, "'Toja Ro's Laundry Services.'" She lifted her eyebrows and gestured for us to move inside.

The interior of the building sweltered like a bleach-stinking sauna. Oil lamps cast yellow, anemic light from the upper corners and failed to chase away a damp, pervasive gloom. We found ourselves in a tiny front office dominated by a heavy desk. Bubbling, hissing, churning, clanking, and sputtering noises drifted through two doors set behind the desk in the opposite wall. Piles of random and unidentifiable linens slumped against the walls like forgotten children.

Behind the splintery desk stood a short figure, half-hidden in a layered canopy of dark robes. As I approached, making sure to keep one or two paces behind Malora, I saw that the figure was in fact a gray-skinned little goron. It regarded us emotionlessly even as it shuffled forward to give greeting.

"Good evening, sir and lady. How can I help you?" the goron said. Its words came in a series of toneless, androgynous croaks. Every consonant seemed to click far back in whatever passed for its throat.

"Good evening!" Malora said cheerfully.

"Uh, hi," I managed. I raised a pitiful hand.

The goron stared and said nothing.

Malora threw an impatient glance my way. My lips moved and my tongue wagged like a dying caterpillar, but I couldn't for the life of me think of what to say next. The gloriously awkward seconds that followed were punctuated by the sounds of distant washing and a puff of humid wind from the back rooms. It smelled like acidic dish soap and made my eyes water. Somewhere outside a dog (at least, I thought it was a dog) bayed long and lustily.

It was to Malora's credit that she didn't smash me upside the head. Instead, she simply rolled her eyes and sighed, "We have some washing to drop off, if it's not too late."

The goron smiled, after a fashion. "No, it ain't too late," it said. "What do you have?"

I responded almost _too_ quickly this time, running my hand down the duffle bag's zipper with an almost manic urgency. "Um," I mumbled, "not – I mean – not a lot. Thanks for fitting us in, uh, sir." I fished out the green shirt, still stiff with grime and dried blood. It dangled from my fingers like some grotesque war trophy.

Both Malora and the goron stared at me with wide eyes. Malora's cheeks shone red under her freckles.

"What?" I wheezed.

"Sir?" the goron said flatly. I noticed that goron mouths were actually lined about the edges with the same kind of strange chitin as their backs and bellies. "Lad, I'm a woman."

God-fucking-dammit!

"I, I – I mean – oh – I –" Stammering like an idiot. Now I could feel my own face burning. I wanted to tear off through the entrance and run back out the city gates.

"Cousin Linus don't get off the farm very often," Malora suddenly said. She snatched the shirt from my fingers and handed it to the goron. "I apologize. It's Toja, ain't it?"

The goron's vaguely pained, neutral expression changed not an iota. She took the shirt without looking at it. After making a curious rumbling noise, she looked to Malora and said, "Aye, that's me. 'Tis my shop, here. Your cousin ain't the sharpest hoe in the shed, is he?"

I felt a little hurt when Malora nodded.

As if suddenly waking, Toja Ro took a look at the shirt in her strange fingers. "What fabric's this?" the proprietor asked suspiciously.

I couldn't remember. The safe bet: "Uh – cotton?"

She nodded briskly. "A southern boy, eh? Fine weave, too. Can't say much for the design, but it's a good garment." Those big, black eyes blinked. It made a wet, papery sound. "Fine enough, then. I know how to treat cotton right, I do. Overnight?"

I nodded.

"Well, that's extra. All told," the goron clicked her hard lips together, "that's four rupees even."

A small blue purse appeared in Malora's fingers. As she undid the leather drawstrings holding it closed, I turned my eyes down and took a long look at myself. My shoes were dusty and spattered with mud. The jeans were in largely the same condition, but were also dappled with dried blood and patchy grass stains.

"Do you mind if I add something else to this order?" I asked absently.

Neither Malora nor Toja objected, though the goron advised me that anything large would require more of the glitter. Malora opened the purse and I caught sight of a pile of tiny, perfectly-cut gems within.

I sighed. I couldn't possibly just strip off my filthy pants here, no matter how much I felt the urge to. Instead, I settled for removing my shoes, peeling off my socks, and sticking them into the bundle of laundry.

A sudden realization struck me as Malora paid the clerk and the little goron took my clothes off to be laundered: If I stay here much longer, I'll have to get some new clothes. A single pair of pants and socks would not be enough – at least, not in the long run. In any event, my current get-up made me stick out like a broken thumb.

Minutes later, Malora and I stood back out in the street before Toja Ro's laundry. My feet were sweaty and uncomfortable, nestled in shoes without socks. Suck it up, Linus. Suck it up.

"Well," Malora said.

"Yeah."

"That was . . ."

"Embarrassing?" I traced a finger above the stitching across my cheekbone. "Sorry. I'm fucking retarded, I guess."

Malora began to walk, but without any real urgency in her step. "I suppose that I should just expect such things when I'm around you," she mused.

"Sorry. Seriously."

She giggled. "Oh, pay it no mind," she said. "Just remember that when it comes to gorons, the little ones are the women, right?" Malora spun around mid-stride, a movement that was endearingly balletic. "And fairies? The females are the taller ones. Ever seen a zora?"

"Not in person, no."

"So strange." She grinned mischievously. "Well, I can't really help you there, anyway. Zora women-folk are skinnier and have smaller fins, or at least that's what they say. I went to school with a zora girl. Name of Chua. Stank pretty bad, the poor thing. And she had fins as big as the lads, so far as I could tell. Nice enough girl, though." She shivered. "Not that I blame anybody for bein' bothered by their sort."

"Zora?"

"Aye."

We stopped in the middle of the street. It came to me that I had no idea where I was. I thought that we had been traveling on a northbound street, but the light hitting the walls of the buildings seemed off somehow. Shadows reached out with arms cast by chimneys and shop signs.

"Wi'out stockings, are you very uncomfortable?" Malora asked. She ran a hand through her hair and ended up tracing the length of her ear. Something about the gesture summoned moth-wings in my stomach.

I shook my head. "Naw. I'm fine. The socks were getting pretty bad. I can last a night without 'em."

"What kind of shoes are those, anyway?"

"Sneakers," I said.

She grinned a bit. "Sneaking shoes, then? Do you need to do much of that, Linus Olsen? Mayhap you're a spy?"

I smiled awkwardly and said, "Ah, no. They're, um, a pretty common kind of athletic shoe. A lot of people wear them because they're comfortable."

"Where you come from, you mean?"

"Yes." Scratching, scratching, scratching. Nervous fingers playing at the stitches.

Her eyes traced me up and down then, quite openly. Another appraising look in a long line of appraising looks. I suddenly felt naked and self-conscious. I wanted to stop doing anything and go still as a statue. I wanted to head off any word or gesture that might betray me. Did I really have something to hide? All I know is that in that moment, I wanted acutely to hide _something_, to prevent Malora from knowing it. As in the laundry, a large part of me wanted to run, to break away from Malora and Tash and Ingo and never see them again. Part of me wanted to dash up the closest connecting street and disappear from their lives forever.

"Do you mind much if we make a quick stop at a temple?"

My jittery hand stilled. My heart was thumping fast. It went on that way, even after I realized how silly I must look. Christ. Here I was in the middle of the street (_in a town that shouldn't exist, talking with a fictional girl_), on the brink of a panic attack. And over what? Why was I acting like this? Jesus!

So, stood and stared (_once more_), unable to answer a simple question. I tried not to tremble. I think I succeeded. Mostly.

"Linus?"

I drew my hand down and attempted a grin. "Sorry. My mind was wandering."

"Obviously!" Malora said, smiling gently. "I just wanted to know –"

"If we could visit a temple?"

"It won't take long. I just want to receive darshan, and then we can go on ahead to the bathhouse. I promise."

That terrible, pounding anxiety had finally drained away, leaving in its place a kind of barren, emotionally exhausted sensation. I was not exactly at ease, but at least I could think straight. What the hell was wrong with me?

My brow furrowed. No time for this. I nodded and said, "I guess that'll work. You're the boss."

"All right then!" She nodded decisively. "Follow me. Ain't but a short trip. Oloro ain't a big town, anyway." Malora took off down the street at a brisk walk, and I followed.

We entered a ramshackle, clearly poor residential district. Wood smoke and dooryard conversation hung heavy in the air. Children played on the thresholds of open gates and doorways. Farmhands, stooped and dirty after the day's work, trudged through the streets. Young women leaned from windows and called to friends and lovers. Many eyes – hungry, curious, and suspicious eyes – followed us on our path.

A boy of no more than ten or eleven approached us eagerly with a basket full of brown, speckled, eggs. He looked ready to launch into a vigorous sales pitch when he obviously caught sight of my ears. His jaw fell slack and he watched us go wordlessly, as if he had just witnessed the passing of titans or spirits from some distant, mythic era.

"You may want to think o' buyin' a cap," Malora said as we turned down another street. "When people see those ears o' yours, they're liable to do all kinds o' mad things."

Just wait until they see my tattoo, I thought morosely.

Another turn, and then another. I found myself treading a quieter, narrower lane. We walked between low, silent buildings that appeared older than the others. Their stone and adobe walls stood pale and solid in evening shadow. Malora quickened her pace and soon stopped before a nondescript structure that, on closer inspection, was built with blocks of gray and white marble. A pair of lit brass braziers stood on either side of an open, arched door. Their coals glowed and snapped as we approached.

Malora turned on the temple threshold and looked back to where I stood, indecisive, in the middle of the street. "Are you not coming in?" she asked. There was a hint of disappointment in her voice.

"I'm not sure that'd be appropriate," I managed.

"Are you certain? All are welcome in a sanctuary of the Three. It won't be –"

"Sorry. I just don't feel right about it." I felt like a dick, interrupting. Something in me just wanted to cut this off as quickly and completely as possible. Nerves.

I could tell immediately that Malora was slightly hurt by my refusal. She shrugged and put on as ambivalent a face as possible. "If you insist," she said. "As I said, it won't take long. Wait here."

So I did. Malora swept into the darkness within the temple and I stood there on its doorstep, feeling at once silly and apprehensive. I heard voices from within – a low, incomprehensible grumble. A sleek, short-haired dog trotted past in the street. Somewhere out in the mess of Oloro, I heard wild laughter.

As it turned out, Malora made good on her promise of a short visit. She returned from the confines of the temple after just over five minutes, looking pensive. The dimming light painted her features in somber colors. Her sandals whispered across the cobbles. She walked past me and into the street without a word.

I began to feel more than a little like some loyal terrier as I followed in her wake.

"I can tell you're not of the faith, Linus. You must worship other gods than the Three." Malora spoke without preamble or provocation. Her words drifted behind her like willow-the-wisps. "All the same, I wish you would've joined me. Anyone – o' the faith or no – can receive darshan."

I ran my hand through my increasingly greasy hair. "What is that, anyway? Darshan?"

She glanced back at me darkly. "You don't receive darshan in your religion? You don't give audience to your gods?"

Truth be told, I didn't know. As I've mentioned, I was never much for the headier ideas of God and Christ. I simply shook my head, once more hedging my bets.

Malora threw me another look – one slathered in a kind of weary annoyance – and said, "You know the symbol o' the Triforce, right?"

"Of course."

"Well, it ain't just an idea. That symbol is sacred. It has power. I remember Mama scoldin' me for tracin' it in the sand when I was small. Just makin' the sign with your hands is serious business – because it ain't just a symbol. It's a window."

I nodded and scratched at my left bicep.

"The Triforce is the direct connection to the goddesses in our world," Malora continued. "And every symbol o' the Triforce is like, well, a kind o' copy of the original." She shook her head in mild frustration. "It's hard to describe. Basically, every Triforce symbol is a kind o' portal to the goddesses. Look upon it, and you catch a little glimpse of the divine . . . and the divine catches a little glimpse o' you. That's what it is to receive darshan. It's a personal connection with the Three. You look upon the Triforce, and the Triforce looks upon you."

A cool, wormy prickle began to make its way across my skin. Something about the practice was both familiar and unsettling. A thought then, begging to be voiced: "Is that why I don't see any Triforces around? In carvings or flags or clothes?"

Malora paused. The look she favored me with was deadly serious. "I told ya' – it ain't just some symbol. There's power in those lines. It may not be a sorcerer's enchantment or an alchemist's brew, but it's power all the same. You don't just go pastin' that kind o' thing on a poster, or knittin' it on your britches."

As she finished, a goron with a patch over one of its eyes limped down the street beside us. It grunted in terse acknowledgment and went on its way.

My right hand snaked up to my left arm, hovered there a moment, and then dropped. I swallowed dryly. Fucking hell.

"Oh," I said.

A tiny smile curled her lips. "Ain't like the religion back home?"

"No."

Malora started tromping up the street again, trailing a sense of renewed purpose. "Nay, I suppose not. For all I know, Linus, you outerlanders sacrifice chick-uns every fortnight and worship a great big steer with diamond horns." A giggle; a grin. "Come now. Let's get on to the bathhouse. Father's probably already wringin' his hands."

So it went – up a hill, around a corner, and yet another. Open windows and spilling light. Families sitting down to meals or lounging on doorsteps, smoking pipes and rolled cigarettes. On the street corners, boys and girls in green tabards were scrambling up ladders to light street lamps atop their wooden poles.

I was so twisted around by Oloro's winding avenues that I couldn't help but feel a moment of stunned awe as the bathhouse suddenly sprang up before us. It rose from the street and presided over the northeast corner of town like some grand, portly nabob. The peaked caps of its undulating roof sat some five stories above the ground. Smooth, white adobe walls were dotted with grand windows and vents that breathed wisps of pale steam. Banners of soft green and harvest gold fluttered above the building's massive entrance.

Despite the rampant preparations for the oncoming night, the summer sun still hung just over the western horizon. It wore a cloak of blood-streaked clouds and sat upon the edge of the valley like some lazing overlord on a castle wall. The light that fell over the parapets of the bathhouse was a ruddy mix of red and burnt orange, casting long shadows and soaking the street with ethereal fire.

Though Malora was more than eager to get inside, I approached the structure's titan double doors with a sense of baseless foreboding. One of the doors opened before Malora could even get her hands on its heavy iron handle. She danced back as a small pack of middle-aged men trotted out. They wore loose robes and chatted excitedly amongst themselves. Their hair was wet and they exuded a mild, perfumed scent as they passed.

As I shuffled about them, a horn blew over the town with all the sultry, lugubrious urgency of a shofar. I glanced back down the street. Malora gestured impatiently, and I turned back with a lift of the eyebrows. The horn – or whatever it was – bellowed once more as the doors closed behind us.


	10. 10

**10**

A surprisingly tight, low-ceilinged room opened up beyond the bathhouse's entrance. The air was hot and heavy with moisture. Globe-shaped lanterns of yellow stained glass cast a soft, insistent glow about the place. On the floor was a tile mosaic of waves crashing upon a shore, and on the walls hung ornate tapestries depicting bathers along silvery pools and rivers. A short reception desk of smooth and polished marble stood on the opposite end of the room. It was flanked by a pair of staircases that proceeded up past the low rafters; in turn, below each timber staircase was a door that led off to God-knew-where within the immense bathhouse.

Classy, I thought. Certainly different than what I had imagined – a kind of dank, brooding bathing mausoleum in the Roman style. Of course, this was but the reception area. For all I knew, the people of Hyrule washed with sand and giant maggots.

Knots of people gathered about the waiting area, either on benches about the walls or standing in line before the desk. Oloro's signature hint of sulfur was joined by a none-too-subtle miasma of body odor, cloying perfume, and some kind of spicy incense lit in a vain attempt to cover up the smell of pre-washed bathers. Conversation warbled through the reception space like tidewater.

It was from one of these groups of folk talking in low tones that a form, round and slightly quivering, detached and moved toward us.

"There ya' are!"

Tash Lon wore worry on his face poorly. It crinkled the edges of his eyes and drew his lips tight, making him look about ten years older than I suspected he actually was. He surveyed us as one might survey bearers of dire news.

"Father," Malora sighed. "We ain't late, are we?"

He shook his head. "No, no. Just with . . ."

"Oh."

"Aye."

Father and daughter stared at one another for a moment, abashed. It had been a long day, and I was getting a little irritated with such interludes.

"So, Tash," I said cheerily. "How's this work, man? I can't say that I've ever been to, uh, a bathhouse." It only took a half-second's worth of bewilderment to continue, "Like this one. I've never been to a bathhouse like this one." I forced a smile.

"Aye?" Tash rubbed his nose. "Ah, well. Don't worry about it. I'll take care of the particulars." He gestured at the loose line leading to the front desk. "C'mon, then. I couldn't buy ya' a tub on account o' you not bein' here – what with all the demand an' such – but I know a fellow up in the front o' the line."

We followed him through the waiting area and toward the desk, where a pair of men in finely-tailored tunics and black pantaloons stood conversing. They were about third in line, preceded only by a reed-thin woman swallowed up in green robes and a gaggle of jostling, dirt-smeared teenagers. Tash walked up to the pair with a jovial, familiar smile.

"Gentlemen!" he announced. "This here is my daughter, Malora Lon, an' the young fellow I told you about earlier."

The first man, roly-poly about the middle but strangely thin-faced beneath his scruffy blonde beard, stepped forward and bowed with one hand behind his back. "Young lady Malora," he said, genteel as a Southern dandy.

Behind him came short, muscular fellow. He looked to be in his early thirties, clean-shaven and roughly handsome beneath a mop of brown hair. His intense eyes, brown as turned soil, took me in for a moment. Without another word, he bowed and repeated his companion's greeting. Malora executed the same kind of curtsy she had used on the loquacious shopkeeper, this time without any mockery in it. Her movements were less precise, full of nerves, and somewhat painful to watch.

The two men now turned to me, neither one of them saying anything. Then, each took my arm as Tash had done the day before, grasping it just below the elbow. As they did, they introduced themselves in turn as Mohan Smythe (the bearded fellow) and Rickard Tiller (his younger, burlier counterpart).

"Mister Smythe and I have had occasion to trade breedin' stock," Tash said proudly. "An' I believe Mister Tiller is the son o' Count Raymond Tiller, o' the east parts of the valley. I done some business with him a few years back. Tried to bring in some fruit trees for the ranch. Most didn't take, but hey – worth tryin', huh?" He laughed with bravado.

Neither Tiller nor Smythe took their eyes off me as Tash spoke. They inspected me as one might inspect a strange new draft animal. I saw Smythe linger on my ears, creases radiating from the edges of his lips.

It was Rickard Tiller who spoke. His voice was colloquial, but measured as a knife. "An' where do you come from, outerlander? Strange times for a for'ner like yerself to appear as you supposedly did."

I bobbled the question in my mind, unsure of the best way to answer. I settled on, "Far outside Hyrule. I come from – I mean my home is, uh, probably on the other side of the world."

"Probably?" Tiller's eyebrows rose incredulously.

Ahead, I could see the thin woman slide a pair of gleaming green rupees across the reception desk. The clerk who took them was a wide, grinning goron dressed in what looked like a kind of jerry-rigged suit.

I stammered, "I, I don't really –"

The clerk handed the woman something unseen and she hobbled away from the desk, toward the right set of stairs. As she did, Malora interjected, "Good sirs, do you mind if we go ahead of you? It has been a very long day, and our friend Linus has injuries that need soaking."

"Aye, we heard you fought off a pack o' snout raiders," Mohan Smythe said, smiling and raising a hand to stroke his beard. "And by your lonesome, too. That true, son?"

I nodded slowly.

"By Din, sir!" Smythe laughed. "You go on ahead of us, then. All respect to anyone wi' the stones to take on the enemy's raiders by himself. We need more like your sort, stranger. The Three bless ya'. Will we see more o' ya', then?"

Though I nodded absently, I had a feeling that I would never see this man again.

Rickard Tiller still regarded me with open suspicion, but he made no attempt to block me as Malora quietly took my hand and pulled me before the reception desk. Behind us, Tash said some low, terse goodbyes and then pushed up to join us. The goron clerk shuffled slightly, as if in discomfort. Based on the goron's size and girth, I took a wild guess that this was, in fact, a "him." His odd, insect grin never wavered.

"Welcome to the world-famous Oloro Bathhouse and Resort, sirs and lady!" he said in a friendly baritone. "What can I do for you?"

"Oh, aye. Hello again." Tash achieved a brief, businesslike smirk. "Ah, I already bought meself a place up on the third, but these two," he gestured at Malora and me, "need soaks too. There room left?"

Behind the clerk was a very long, very tall wooden rack. On it hung dozens of pieces of carved wood, stained dark and painted with Hylian symbols. They were arranged in very precise rows. Tokens of some sort. The attendant didn't even need to look at the blank spaces where absent tokens meant occupied baths. "We still have room on the third floor, sir. How many basins would you . . .?" He trailed off with a buzzing little hiss. I think that he eyed Malora and me then, but without any pupils to go by, I couldn't be sure.

With a hint of exasperation, Tash said, "Aye, two tubs. Two _different_ tubs, thank ya' kindly. I'll pay."

And so he did, fishing out a large purse and tossing two shiny red gems onto the desktop. They made a fine, musical sound as they landed and skittered to a stop. Up this close, I could see that the rupees were embossed with a carved seal in their centers. The pale light played off its edges, revealing a very familiar design – a stylized pair of wings spreading triumphantly from symbols resembling the body and talons of a thunderbird. What wasn't familiar was the lack of a Triforce symbol between the wings. Instead, there was a single eye rimmed with what looked like a sliding teardrop.

The familiar becomes unfamiliar. I smiled slightly, with a kind of whimsical despair. Everything I knew had taken on aspects of the uncanny. At any moment, understanding could become deepest confusion. God help me.

The goron took the rupees in one hand and rummaged about somewhere beneath the desk with the other. He came up with two green rupees clasped in his stubby fist. "And your change, sir," he said brightly. He turned to the rack of tokens, seemed to stop and consider, and then grabbed two adjacent pieces from the third tier. He handed the tokens to Tash. "Enjoy your bath, sirs and lady."

Before I knew what was going on, the three of us had turned from the desk and were marching toward the staircase on the left side of the entrance hall. We mounted the wide, solid stairs and proceeded into the upper reaches of the bathhouse.

"How many levels does this place have?" I asked as we began the climb.

"Four main ones," Tash answered. "Plus a basement or two, I think. For all the pumps an' tanks an' such they use to make all that water good for bathin'."

"Do they really have that many customers?" I marveled.

"Oh, aye, aye." Tash chuckled dryly. "An' a lot o' different kinds o' baths. On the first an' second floors you got the basic baths. Mostly shared, y'know. For folk who don't have much money to pay and don't mind seein' another man naked now and then. It's fine, o' course. For all the farmers an' such o' the town. And they keep the men's an' women's baths separate. We ain't hedonists." He winked at me awkwardly.

We came to the second floor. An alcove opened out to our right, lit by flickering lanterns. A goron attendant stood next to a pair of doors that presumably led off into the vast communal baths mentioned by Tash. Before us, the stairs continued on and upward, tunneling into gloom.

I couldn't help but note that, away from the unwashed masses, the smell of the bathhouse turned from wet and thick to wet and fairly pleasant. Like soap and sandalwood. I saw burled, polished support beams and smooth white walls. A sense of vast, well-kept antiquity exuded from the open doors and stairwells.

"Now, the third floor – that's where the private tubs are. And – oh, hello again."

A figure shuffled out of the shadows of the alcove, onto the second floor landing. Dark, piercing eyes and a wan face. A halting, awkward gait. Muttonchops and tight lips. Ingo.

I shivered.

Tash turned back to Malora and me with a playful expression. "Ingo here couldn't wait up. The fellow's all but frothin' at the mouth for a dip, eh?" He cackled and slapped his friend on the shoulder.

Ingo looked me over with the usual lack of emotion. He had doffed his usual tunic and suspenders for a terrycloth horror that appeared to be some kind of bathrobe. It was tied about the waist with a threadbare cloth belt and ended just below his knees. His ankles appeared hairy and very white in the lamplight. He suddenly looked like a cadaverous, mutton-chopped Jeffery Lebowski. It was all I could do to suppress a gale of horrified laughter.

When I saw the knot of gnarled pink scar tissue that extended the inside length of Ingo's right calf and down onto the ball of his sandaled foot, any chance of laughter died utterly. I think I made a tiny choking noise.

"Ingo was beginning to think you'd made off with our Malon, lad. That he might have to come after you." His blank expression never changed.

"Ah, Ingo. Come off it. They weren't late in comin' at all." Tash swatted the farmhand's shoulder again jovially. "Now, I was just tellin' Linus about all the sorts o' baths they offer here. All the different floors, see?" Without a break in conversation, Tash began to climb the next flight of stairs. Ingo raised one eyebrow and started up after.

Not for the last time, I considered bailing then and there. Never to return. No sir. Fuck this shit.

Instead, I followed obediently. Malora leaned close as we entered the next stairwell, murmuring, "Don't let him get to ya'. He's just . . . like that." She smiled encouragingly, though there was obvious doubt in her eyes.

Meanwhile, Tash continued to expound on the bathhouse about us. "Aye, indeed. Third floor's got the private baths. Nice ones, too. I spare no expense for friends o' the Lons, by Nayru! You're in for a treat, lad."

The stairs reached a small landing, and then turned to the right. I kept pace with Malora, right on Tash and Ingo's heels.

Here in the stairwell, soft and subtle noises emanated from the walls. Sibilant hissing and far-off ticking sounds. An occasional, gentle rush and metallic knocking beyond the plaster.

"What about the fourth floor?" I asked.

"Ahhh, there's private baths up there too," Tash said reluctantly. "But it's more than a bit pricey, eh?" He glanced over his shoulder at me. "And it's restricted to visitin' nobility, see."

Malora piped up, "But father, _we're_ –"

"Hush now." Tash's voice dropped an octave, into a brief and frightening growl. He glanced back again, darkly. No more than a second passed and the look was gone, as if it had never existed in the first place. In its place was Tash's usual, fatherly smile.

. . . Okay. That was weird.

"Nope! A bit too fancy-pants for sorts like us, the fourth floor is!" he said with a flourish. "Big ivory tubs an' rare oils. That sort o' thing. I hear they serve the nobs drinks an' fine food as they soak, too."

"And let 'em bring up women," Ingo grumbled. "Y'know. Of a certain sort."

"Heh!" Tash laughed nervously. "No need to be crass, Ingo."

"Hey, Ingo just passes along what he hears. An' Ingo hears that the fuzzy-hat types like to go up to the fourth floor, have their baths, drink their good wine n' whiskey, and ball a couple o' whores while they're at it."

"_Ingo_."

Ingo sniffed. "Just passin' it along. No need to get upset."

The exchange ended as brilliant gold light flooded down the stairs. Ahead, the stairwell ended abruptly, opening into empty space. I caught sight of high rafters and steam rising through shafts of amber light.

We rose into a vast and open space. At first, it felt like a titan auditorium or gathering hall, or perhaps some cathedral dedicated to a green and loving god. A vaulted ceiling arched some thirty, perhaps forty feet above us. The floor was smooth, shining hardwood that had been varnished a handsome blonde color. The waning, beautiful light of dusk fell through immense windows and collected in great lagoons across the atrium.

The air was rich with pleasing smells: Cloves, rose petals, cinnamon, soft cologne, oleander, and something that was very like the scent of a coming rainstorm. Water pooled on stone. All sat slow and heavy on air that was thickly humid. Tiny beads of water met my hand as I placed it on the stairwell's banister.

The stairs ended in the middle of the massive room, depositing our group on a small landing circled on three sides by ornamental railing. Directly in front of us was a neat little desk manned by three figures. Two of them were smaller, likely female, gorons dressed in nondescript robes of nondescript colors. The third, standing as straight and elegant as a Grecian statue, was a tall Hylian woman. She smiled cordially as we emerged from below.

Behind the desk and its inhabitants was a short wall or divider, about seven feet in height. A closer inspection told me that this was actually an ordered row of screens, made of paper or thin cloth. Each screen depicted a stylized scene or landscape, painted in soft colors. They formed a fairly solid barrier that continued several dozen feet in either direction. Ah – so this was how they divided up the space here. Interesting.

"All right then!" Tash announced. He turned and handed Malora and I each of the tokens he had paid for downstairs. I ran my thumb over the stained wood and found that the symbol painted there was also carved into the surface of the token. The attendants watched the little exchange silently, hands folded and expressions passively polite.

We queued up before the desk three-abreast. Ingo and the Lons went before me with all the confidence of folk who had done this many times. Each handed their token to an attendant, and in turn each attendant said soft words of thanks and pointed in a general direction. Ingo stomped immediately to the left, throwing me one last glare before vanishing around the corner of the screens.

My turn, now. I stepped to the reception desk and found myself face-to-face with the Hylian woman. My hands fumbled up the token, displaying it like a magic charm or talisman. Her smile widened and her full lips spread. Teeth like pearl or alabaster. Through my awkward schoolboy glances, I saw that the attendant had ears that were longer and less curved than other Hylians. They were slender and somehow delicate, ending below hair so pale it was almost platinum. Her narrow eyes were the color of bright, beaten copper. For a moment, I stared into them unabashedly, embarrassment turning to slow wonder.

"Have you ever bathed with us before, sir?" The attendant spoke in low, sultry tones. She held my gaze without flinching.

The token danced between my nervous fingers. Those amazing, shining eyes held every ounce of my attention. I felt like I could find worlds in those eyes. "I, er," I started. The attendant blinked and said nothing, patient as a sphinx. Finally, I managed to say, "No. Uh, no. I haven't."

"May I look at your chit?" the attendant asked quietly. I complied immediately, handing the bath token over with a kind of reverence. She examined the painted symbol on it and said, "Ah. Well, it's very simple." When she looked back up, I felt a warm little thrill race through my guts. "It appears that you will be using Basin Thirty-Six. Take the right aisle here," she pointed to the right edge of the screens, "and ask one of our many attendants if you need assistance."

A presence at my elbow. "I'll help you find it, Linus." I glanced right and saw Tash. He nodded at the attendant and smiled lightly. There was something nervous there. Something anxious.

"Enjoy your baths!" the attendant said. She bowed slightly, and her metallic eyes flashed electric in the falling light.

I had been so enrapt by the tall woman's strange appearance that I hadn't even noticed that Malora had already disappeared toward whatever bathtub she had been assigned. A moment of somewhat puzzling disappointment. Tash led me away from the reception desk, around the corner, and into a veritable maze of tall divider screens. Here, they formed a tight aisle that led off down the length of the atrium. Gaps in the screens either formed intersections with other aisles or led off into what I could only assume were the private baths themselves.

It was darker here in this strange open-air hallway. Tiny candles glowed softly within paper lanterns that hung along the screens. Painted landscapes and scenes of bucolic splendor rolled past us as we made our way down the aisle. I could hear low conversation and gentle splashing beyond the partitions. Other bathers and robed attendants moved phantomlike about us. Steam and soap-smells drifted down the paper-walled avenues.

We passed several gaps in the partitions that were marked with small signs of the same color and material as the bath tokens. An old woman with thin, damp hair exited one of these in a thick green bathrobe. She trailed a thin pool of water across the floor as she passed us, smiling.

At last, after turning down one of the intervening aisles, Tash stopped before one of the gaps in the screens. Next to it was a sign etched with a symbol that I realized corresponded to the one that had been on my bath token: A square with its right side missing, several geometric hash-marks contained within it.

"Thirty-six," Tash said, sweeping his hand across the space between the screens. "Ah, there're the usual accoutrements inside. Should be nice n' clean – they keep a tight ship here, they do." He sniffed. "Meet us out front in an hour or so if you want to join us for supper. I'm buyin'."

I looked him over, feeling awkward and suddenly put on the spot. "Uh, thank you. Again," I said. "You've done way too much for me, man."

Tash shrugged. "Ye' saved me an' mine from the snouts, Linus. This an' a meal ain't half o' what I owe you. An' you're in need o' help yourself. Wouldn't be kindly o' me to just turn you out on your way." He looked down at his boots. His mustache bristled as his face screwed up in thought. "Mayhap we'll come to a day when you owe me back. Mayhap. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, eh?" He affected a goofy smile, but I could tell that Tash was not nearly as good at putting on airs as his daughter. There was something uncomfortable and embarrassed behind that silly grin.

"Anyway, I got my own bath to attend to," Tash said quickly. He raised a hand and turned back down the aisle. "See you soon, Linus!" With a little hop and a waddle, he took off down the rows of dividers.

Once more, I found myself alone in an alien place. Little by little, I was getting used to the sensation – a kind of greasy drop in my guts. The moment before stepping out an airplane. Anticipation of freefall.

I walked into the alcove beyond the partitions and turned around another corner. I found myself in a tight area hemmed in on all sides by the painted dividers. Women in grand dresses of blue and yellow to my left. Armored champions battling snarled-toothed beasts to my right. Green, towering hills like Chinese canyons stood in majestic relief directly in front of me. Paper lanterns hung in the corners. Their candles flickered at my approach, as if trembling. In the middle of it all, shrouded in billowing curtains of steam, was the appointed bathtub.

And what a bathtub! Sunk into the floor, its raised rim reached only to the tops of my ankles. The tub itself appeared to be made of carved and polished stone, falling past the hardwood floor some three or four feet at its deepest point. Two fat copper pipes arched from the floor to the right of the tub and fed directly into it. Beneath the shimmering surface of the water, I could see three stepped levels proceeding down into the shady depths at its center. The whole thing looked big enough to accommodate four, maybe even five people at a time. More like a hot tub or Jacuzzi, I mused.

Across from the monster stone tub, up against the base of the left partition, was an iron clothes rack with a small basket attached to its base. A gray-white towel was folded across the upper rack. I crossed the distance and drew my hand across it. Soft, fresh linen. A vaguely spherical lump of what appeared to be soap sat in the metal basket beneath the towel. When I picked it up, it felt soft and gritty beneath my fingers. It smelled of lemons and something sharp, like juniper berries.

I turned around to take in the whole place once, twice, three times. Fairly nice, this. The high partitions on all sides certainly summoned the illusion of privacy. High above, the atrium's rafters echoed with a soft and indefinable susurrus. Somewhere, I heard a dull _sploosh_ and somewhere I could hear a child's laughter. The ambient light dimmed slow and sensuous.

I blinked. Fuck it, I thought. A bath is probably exactly what I need. I feel like a hobo right now, anyway.

The duffle bag slipped off my shoulder and landed at the base of the towel rack. Slowly, almost cautiously, I stripped off each piece of clothing and folded it beside the bag. Finally, I reached back and pulled the elastic band from my hair. It fluttered to the ground like a chunk of shed skin. Long, lank hairs prickled over my shoulders.

For a time, I crouched naked at the rim of the tub and bent to inspect the water within. Clear as crystal. The steam rising off its surface carried a fine summer scent with it – something like lavender. I noticed a few scattered flower petals bobbing peacefully across the water, each a different color. A nice touch. Very Martha Stewart. I dipped a toe across the threshold.

Jesus Christ, it was _hot_! I drew back a moment, surprised, and let my leg hover above the water. Hesitation. Oh God: What if they had assigned me the wrong tub? What if this was some goron shit right here? Something their weird pill bug bodies could take, but left humans boiled like fleshy lobsters? I tested the water again. Very hot. Yes. But . . . not _that_ hot. I let my whole foot linger. Huh. It turned out the hot tub comparison was fairly apt – not scalding, but enough to alarm one's body at first contact.

I grabbed the globular hunk of soap from its basket, set it on the stone edge, and slid carefully into the bathtub. Down one tier, and then another. Hot, sweet water pressed in on me and rose to my shoulders. I felt my muscles twitch, and then slowly let go of the day's tension. I breathed deep and closed my eyes. I let myself fall backward, weightless, and sank entirely beneath the surface.

Warm darkness like the womb. A slowly pulsing void. My hair fanned out and swam like golden strands of kelp on an ocean bottom.

When I came back up, I opened my eyes to candlelight playing through tiny whorls of steam. I sucked a breath of it in and let the hot vapor snuffle its way about my lungs. I sat there a moment, staring into space. The warm, woolly twilight of the bathhouse.

Every muscle now felt sleepy and sated. I could feel the day's rime of dried sweat and dust soaking away from my skin. This really was pleasant. Now all I needed was a nice, tight roach packed with indica and a bottle of beer. Fucking exquisite.

I lolled my head back against the cool, wet rim of the basin. I chuckled absently, seemingly at nothing. "Fuckin' right!" I sighed.

Behind me, something stirred. I heard movement. "Linus?" A little splash. A voice floated from beyond the screen behind me – from beyond the green paper mountains and the clouds that danced about their peaks. "Linus, is that you?"

"Malora?"

I turned about, suddenly alert and self-conscious. Could she see me? Could she see through to my supposedly impenetrable little domain? I looked about stupidly, and then felt a deep red embarrassment. Of course she couldn't.

But, she _could_ hear me. After all, it should have been obvious – the tubs we occupied were adjacent to one another. The two tokens, hanging side by side on their rack.

"Yes," Malora responded. Her voice was soft and slightly muffled. "It's me." A breath of quiet. "It looks as if we're all but bathin' together, Linus Olsen." A giggle floated through the partitions.

I smiled, relaxing once again. It was hard not to: The fine hot water worked like subtle fingers over my sore calves and lower back.

"It appears so," I said.

For the space of about a minute (though it felt much longer), I listened intently to lap of bathwater and the far-off cathedral murmuring of the atrium. Neither of us spoke. I think I heard Malora move in the next space. A low, quiet sloshing noise.

"Hey. Listen." I leaned back and closed my eyes. "I have to apologize again for earlier. I have a habit of losing my temper at bad moments like that." A dozen examples flashed behind my eyelids – words said in the heat of the moment that I often could never take back. The cloying, indelible ache of regret. "So . . . yeah. I'm sorry. I was out of line."

And then: Nothing. I felt a stab of panic. Was she there? Had she heard me? I imagined her then, hunched and naked in her own bathtub, staring at the screen as this, this _stranger_ spoke to her. This _outerlander_. Was I violating some unspoken rule? Some Hylian code of conduct that –

"Earlier? Do ya' mean in the marketplace?"

I nearly jumped at the sound of Malora's voice. "Y-yeah," I said, voice quavering.

Malora laughed. The clear, honest sound of it swept away my anxieties like a cleansing tide. "Oh, Linus. You don't have to apologize. I let my father vex me and I turned it on you. I should be the one askin' your forgiveness."

"Well," I said, "I was kind of a dick. So, seriously, thank you for being cool about it. Other people . . . haven't."

At this, Malora again said nothing. That sense of unspoken tension returned to the humid spaces between the two tubs. I continued to speak then, my tired eyes sagging and tongue loose as an unfurled flag. "Hey, you know that woman out front? The one who took my token?"

This seemed to catch her attention. "Aye?"

"Did you see her eyes?" I asked, whimsical. "They were . . . crazy. She had crazy eyes."

A pause. Pensive, I imagined. "Aye. Most Shiekah do."

I sat up straight. Water rippled away from my chest and lapped about the other side of the tub. "She was a Shiekah?"

"Indeed," Malora said. "An' that's the way you know 'em. They have strange eyes. That and –"

"Their ears," I realized. I let off a tiny, wondering laugh.

"You catch on more and more quickly, Linus," Malora said. There was a smile in her voice. "So, how do your stitches treat ya'?"

I raised a wet hand and probed the area of the wound. "It's okay," I said. "Doesn't hurt much, anymore. It still itches, but not nearly as bad as last night or this morning."

"Well then!" Malora chirped, "I believe we can take those out come the mornin'."

"Already?"

"Aye, Linus." There was playful sarcasm in her voice. "The Red is a fine thing, ain't it?"

"Oh. Yeah. Ha! Awesome."

Good, I thought dreamily. I settled down in the water and said, "You know, this isn't too bad. This place."

"The bathhouse?"

"Sure. And Oloro, too, I guess. But especially here. I needed this."

A _sloosh_. A _splish_. Tiny waves on a smooth, rocky shore. "So you're enjoyin' your bath?"

"Fuck yeah," I laughed. I raised one hand and drew my fingers across the undulating surface of the water. A red petal danced away at their approach. "This is nice. It's good. Real good."

"It _is_ good, isn't it?" Her voice was a wistful, steamy phantom. I heard water part, and Malora's voice drifted to me again, louder and fuller now . . . but still just barely above a whisper. She had moved closer to the thin divider between the baths. "Tell me about where you come from, Linus."

It took me a moment to really soak in this request. My eyelids fluttered. "Really?" I asked. "Here? Now?"

"What better place than here? What better time than now?"

"It's . . . complicated."

"What isn't?"

I considered this. Her point was nakedly valid.

"It's hard to talk about," I said. Something twisted in my stomach – but not unpleasantly. Something like nervous anticipation.

Malora's voice came even stronger now. Not closer; just louder. "Ya' seem like you want to talk, Linus. You seem like you _need_ to talk." Frank. Forward. Pressing in with her voice, like probing fingers. "So tell me. Tell me about the other side o' the world. Tell me about a land where they have zippers but nothin' like the Red. Tell me about a place that's never seen the face o' the Demon Moon."

I nodded, even though I knew she couldn't see me. Her words seemed to wrap about my shoulders. To squeeze, ever so gently. I closed my eyes and saw her as I was, submerged up to her shoulders in hot water. I suddenly wondered at her nakedness. Whether there were freckles along her breasts. Whether she had large areolae or dark nipples. What her pubic hair looked like. It took great will to ignore the stirring beneath my own bathwater.

Yes. I did want to talk. That much was obvious. I did need to talk.

So I talked. I talked and watched the steam unravel off the surface of the bathwater and felt myself sink deeper. Felt myself let a little more go.

"I come from a place called America. Really, it's called the United States, but – shit. Really, that's not important." I slipped my fingers through the wet clumps of my hair and pulled them back. Their damp ends squelched between the rim of the tub and my shoulder blades. "If you want to be accurate, I came here from a city called Los Angeles."

"Loss-anjuh-less?"

There it was again: The tiny wrench in my stomach. A small thrill at her words.

"Yeah. Los Angeles. The city of angels."

"What's an," she drew in a sharp, frustrated breath, "ain-jell?"

Oddly, I never skipped a beat as I said, "It's like a, uh, holy spirit. A messenger of God, I suppose."

"Oh. Like a . . . like a djinn or poe, but . . . but of the goddesses?" A slick, soft rustle. In my mind's eye, I saw her pulling wet red hair away from her forehead. "Is it a holy city, then? Los Anjuhless? A city of temples, perhaps?"

I laughed. Couldn't help it – the idea was just too deliciously absurd. "Ah, no. No. It's a lot of things, but Los Angeles is definitely not holy. Some people treat it like it is, but . . ." I looked about, as if the pleasant gloom of the bathhouse could divine the words I was looking for. "Really, it's just a big city. More like a bunch of cities grouped together, actually. But it's still the largest in the country."

"Where you come from, you mean? This . . . Am-air-ika?"

"Yeah. Definitely. Certainly bigger than anything here in Hyrule."

A sound of incredulity. Raucously: "You know nothing, Linus Olsen. Hyrule may not be the biggest country in the wide world, but it's certainly the greatest. Ain't nothin' bigger than the cities here. Certainly not this Los Angeles – especially if your folk don't know how to heal or fight like us."

"Malora, about twelve-million people live there."

For a few moments, I heard only the gentle lap of water and the faint whisper-hints of other bathers. Then, Malora chuckled.

"Haha! Naaayyyyy. You jest, Linus. I doubt there're that many people in all o' Hyrule. Hylium don't contain much more than a million souls, and it's the greatest city in the world."

Now _that_ . . . that gave me pause.

I collected myself and continued, "I don't jest. It's a big goddamn place – hand to God. Twelve-million. I ain't lying."

After several seconds of stunned quiet, Malora whistled. It was a thin, astonished sound. "That's right mad, it is. Go on. Tell me what it's like. It must be . . . very crowded."

"And expensive," I groaned. "So goddamn expensive. Overall, though? Not a bad place to live. Not that I've lived many other places, but ya' know what I mean."

"Not really."

" . . . Right. Well. Anyway – it's very hot and very dry and there are pretty much buildings as far as the eye can see. The city crowds up onto the ocean to the west. Hill country all about. Palm trees everywhere. Terrible air pollution – though it has gotten better, I suppose. The traffic sucks and it's impossible to know someone who isn't trying to make it big as a writer or an actor."

"So there are many theaters there?" Her voice was bright with curiosity.

"Mm, yeah." I decided an explanation of movies was out of order. Part of me wanted to avoid the possibility that Hyrule had some bizarre equivalent, like the lighters that had so inured Malora to my own supposed wonder. "There are. A whole town full of theaters, actors, playwrights. It's crazy."

"I imagine!"

Could she? I blinked. My body slid down the side of the tub, and suddenly all but my eyes up was submerged. I blew bubbles through my nose. A funny little gargling noise. Could she imagine? For that matter . . . could I?

As I came back up for air, I felt the tickle of droplets sliding off the tip of my nose. "Do you want to know how I got here, Malora?"

"Yes." Eager. Very eager.

I stared straight ahead. My mouth felt like it moved on a kind of fleshy autopilot. "It was night. I was in the city . . . on business. Personal business. I was walking by an alleyway. Dark. Couldn't see a thing. But I hear this voice, right? This . . . girl's voice."

Out in the aisles that stretched between the inscrutable mandala of paper screens, I heard quick footsteps.

"And she was crying for help, see? Down the alley. It was fucked up. I was fucked up, honestly. I wasn't thinking straight. And before I knew it, I ran down that alley, into the dark." I swallowed. Despite the wet air about me, my throat felt dry. "And all of a fucking sudden I'm standing on a hilltop. I'm standing there looking out over Hyrule – a place I had, I had just heard about in . . . fucking stories. In legends."

"You didn't think Hyrule was real," Malora breathed.

"No."

"And then you rescued us. You risked your life for a bunch o' strangers."

"I guess."

"Don't be modest, Linus. You fought like a demon for folk who you didn't know from Ol' Alvin." She shifted position audibly. "And all after getting' spirited here by Farore knows what kind o' magic."

I mulled on this a moment. Let the words make weird little pathways in my entranced brain. "You know what's funny?"

Quiet, gentle: "What?"

"Before I came here, I thought Hyrule was just a myth. A . . ." I almost said _game_. "But now? Right now? It's like Los Angeles is the myth."

"What do you mean?"

"To be honest, sometimes it all feels like a dream. Like I woke up here. Like everything that came before was an illusion." I closed my eyes and concentrated on the heat of the water, the caress of the steam. "Over the last two days, whenever I've tried to think back on Los Angeles and my life there, it's felt more and more blurred. There are moments where I don't know whether it ever existed in the first place. Everyone and everything in my life before here – before Hyrule . . . I remember it, but it feels so . . ." I found myself trailing off into slow silence.

"Strange?" Malora suggested.

"Unreal," I blurted. "It feels unreal. Like some weird lie pulled over my eyes to keep me from a bigger truth."

"But . . . if you remember it, it must be real. Right?" Malora's voice was soft but forceful. Encouraging. "And it's not as if you belong here! That much is obvious. You had to have come from somewhere outside Hyrule. You're too strange not to have."

I laughed, though there was little joy in it. "On that much, you're right."

"You must remember your family. Your friends. All the places you went and all the things you did." Her voice seemed to lean forward then. "Los Angeles is real, Linus. As real as Hyrule. I'm sure of it."

Yes. Friends . . . family . . . all those things that connected me back to Los Angeles. To the real world, as it were. To the world I had left behind.

I imagined them, then. Their faces. Stuart. Allen. Jeff. Lira. Tim. Jennifer. Rachel. Old friends, like Randall Owens and Eric Chung. Mom. Even Dad – though he was little more than a memory trapped in photographs and old rooms.

You're never going to see any of them again.

That should have stung. I should have felt tears welling in the corners of my eyes. Instead, I simply gazed up and watched the steam curl away like ghosts. Like the shedding of past lives.

Strangely, idiotically, I began to think of all the people I had met but didn't actually know: Marilyn Reed. Bryan, all muscle and beer-stink and fists. The bald, smiling girl who had poured me a shot of rum. The nameless woman who had complimented my tattoo. The clerk behind the desk of the pawn shop. The homeless man outside, begging for help. A thousand different people sliding to and fro through buses and on street corners.

For some reason, it was these images that finally summoned the real pain. A throbbing, phantom ache that spread through my chest like mercury. Liquid grief. Still, the tears did not come.

The steam rose in ribbons and in it I saw everyone and everything that I had lost. All the faces and things that were cut off from me, forever.

You're never going back. You can't. It's all gone, now. All gone.

I ached.

"Linus?"

"Hmmm?"

"Sorry," Malora said. A ghost voice. A red-haired girl suspended only in sound and imagination. "You became quiet. Are you all right?"

"Yeah," I sighed. "Yeah. It's just catching up to me, is all. Everything that's happened."

Another flurry of footsteps passed down the partitions. I think I heard something drop – a _clonk_ of wood striking wood.

"It's been nice to talk to you, Linus," Malora said. "It's been nice . . . sharin'."

"Same here," I said. I let a grin part my lips.

A distant booming sound. Voices. Growing voices.

"Though," I chuckled, "I suppose I should actually get some soap on myself. I was goddamn filthy before this." My eyes flitted to the bar of soap, but my body seemed far too content in its current position to move just yet.

"Oh, don't be so hard on yourself," Malora giggled. "I live on a ranch. I seen things ten times dirtier than you. _I've_ been ten times dirtier. Twenty, even."

A shout. Somewhere down the rows, there was a toneless cry – surprise, then alarm. A moment later, it was joined by another.

"Y'know . . ." Malora said, her voice very low. Very sly. "I . . . I could . . ." God, I swear I could _hear_ her biting her lip. "I could come over there an' help ya'. Help ya' soap your –"

And then the shouts turned to screams. Voices, rising in a terrible chorus somewhere out in the great atrium of the third floor. Throbbing, high-pitched. A woman, screaming in terror, and as I bolted up –

"Linus?!"

– the scream stopped. In its place came something choked. Something wet and awful. And then there was nothing.

After a terrible, pounding moment of utter quiet, the screaming began again. Elsewhere now – out among the tubs and basins. Yelling and howling. Panic sounds. Words of confusion and horror. A cacophony of bewildered bathers, rising to see and hear the source of the commotion.

And from it all came another voice. Inaudible at first. And then it rose strong, echoing up and amongst the rafters, howling a single word:

"HERO!"

No.

"COME OUT, HERO! COME OUT, MEDDLER! I KNOW YOU ARE THERE!"

No fucking way.

"COME OUT, MEDDLER! COME OUT AND FACE ME, IF YOU DARE!"

Beneath the warm water, I felt my testicles suddenly go numb. My scrotum shrank. Every single muscle in my body seemed to spasm at once. A lance of pure, gray dread pierced my shoulders and scraped down my spine.

I knew that voice. Yes. Barking, growling, more than half alien in its delivery. It had been only a day since I had heard it – but it felt like I had last listened to its throaty tones in another lifetime. Oh God. Not now. I knew that voice, and had dreaded the possibility that I might ever have to hear it again.

The voice belonged to Karrik Fir-Bulbin.


	11. 11

**11**

Fuck. _Fuck_. _FUCK_.

All at once, I found myself scrambling up out of the tub. My feet made a wet _splat _as they struck the floor. I could feel tepid water streaming down the boney contours of my body and pooling about my feet. Steam unfurled from my swiftly cooling skin.

"INTERLOPER! COME AND FACE ME, YOU WHORESON!"

Somewhere, everywhere: rumbling, guttural gout of laughter. It took me a moment, but I realized that it didn't belong to Karrik. Someone different, cackling with obvious mirth.

The relaxation worked by the waters had given way to a kind of numbed, total-body tension. The smooth sensation had disappeared almost between heartbeats, smashed with a spiked maul of adrenaline. It came to me that I wasn't moving. Every muscle – every cell, it seemed – in my body sat taut and paralyzed.

"COME OUT MEDDLER! COME OUT, YOU GODSFORSAKEN COWARD!"

I stood unblinking. My mouth hung open. I could taste hints of soap and perfume on the air.

"ANSWER ME, YOU BASTARD!"

"Linus!"

Malora's voice scurried from behind me. Before me, watercolor women in bright paper dresses danced and danced and danced.

"FACE ME!"

"Linus, run! Get out of here!"

Run? Yes, that was an idea. A fine idea. I needed to – I couldn't – goddammit, why couldn't I think?

"HERO!"

"Linus, what are you doin'? Are you there?!"

What the fuck _was_ I doing? Move, you stupid shit! Move!

"I KNOW YOU ARE HERE, HERO! MY SCOUTS SAW YOU ENTER! I KNOW! AND _YOU _SHOULD KNOW THAT I AM NOT ALONE!"

The voices of the other bathhouse patrons had fallen into a kind of blubbering under-chorus as the moblin had begun his shouting. Now, they picked back up in volume, swirling into a single panic-streaked cacophony.

And still I stood motionless.

"I HAVE ALREADY SLIT ONE WOMAN'S THROAT, MEDDLER! KNOW THAT IF YOU DON'T APPEAR BEFORE ME WITHIN THE COUNT OF ANOTHER MINUTE, I WILL KILL ANOTHER!"

A pause. A breathless, terrible pause.

"IF YOU VALUE NOT THE LIFE OF ONE, KNOW THAT ANOTHER MINUTE'S DELAY AND I WILL GO FROM ROOM TO ROOM IN THIS ACCURSED HOLE, AND I WILL SLAUGHTER EVERY LIVING THING I FIND! DON'T THINK I CANNOT DO THIS, HERO!"

I heard Malora moan, "Oh, goddesses . . . oh goddesses . . . no please . . . no!"

Suddenly, I was standing before that dark, stinking alleyway. Far away, a girl's voice rang with rising, manic fear. Far away. No more than a dozen feet away, now. Unseen, unknowable. Other voices joining hers, bending to Old Friend Panic and his fine massaging talons. I heard wails and shouts and curses. Wet feet splish-slamming through the maze of partitions.

"STARTING NOW, HERO! COME TO ME OR EVERYONE IN THIS FUCKING BUILDING DIES!"

Do something.

God _damn _you, do something!

My hand was a phantom. I could see it rise, but could not feel it. It snaked out in a numb, sinuous arc and snatched the towel off its iron rack. The whole of my body moved like a clockwork figure – clean, precise, and hollow. I watched as my knees bent and my other hand zipped open the duffle bag at my feet. Shaky fingers slipped inside, wrapped tenebrously about cool steel, and pulled upward. I set the Master Sword against the rack.

"THEIR BLOOD WILL BE ON YOUR HANDS, HERO!"

No thought. No _true_ thought, really. I could have . . . well . . . I could have done things differently. It wouldn't have been hard. Not really hard at all, to reach down and pull the waistband of my boxers around my feet. Instead, I unfolded the great white bath towel and set to work.

It occurs to me now that I too must have been in the same spindly embrace of Panic that the other bathers shared. I, however, was an old pal of Panic. We had become ever more acquainted in recent days, and I had begun to understand his methods. I did not jitter or hesitate or have to beat down the intense urge to bolt. Instead, I let Panic inject sour-sweet adrenaline through my veins. My heart pounded like a turbine and my eyes ached and my lungs pulled air in great wet gouts. Everything I saw seemed to go slightly red at its edges.

No thought: I pulled the towel about my shoulders with quick, fluid movements. I wrapped, folded, tucked, and re-tucked. I tightened the edges. I ran tingling fingertips across the seams.

Suddenly, I stood resplendent in a completely improvised toga. Only at this moment did my ability to think begin to return to me. I surveyed my creation with no small amount of bemused pride. A fairly good job, this. Pretty fucking excellent, considering it was my first try. I had even maneuvered the toga so that it covered my very likely heretical tattoo.

An absurd thought struck me: I had never attended even a single toga party in my short life. There was something unutterably melancholy about that realization, as if my heretofore unknown talent had ended up going to waste. It was strange – the thought that I was probably about to die did not feel nearly so sad.

"TIME'S RUNNING OUT, MEDDLER!"

Without another second's debate or hesitation, I swept the Master Sword into my right hand and strode from my personal bathing area.

Light and heat and sound bombarded me like a feverish convulsion.

Out in the artificial hallway created by row after row of room dividers, I was confronted by a scene of small-scale anarchy. Bathers – some clothed, some not – leaned from open partitions and exchanged words so rushed and hysterical that they flowed into a single hellish din. Bathhouse attendants dashed up and down the rows, looking lost and somehow aimless. An old man crouched in nothing but a towel, trying with quiet but stolid words to console a weeping toddler. Across the hallway, a young woman stood staring in the direction of Karrik's voice, hands pressed over her mouth and seemingly oblivious of her own nakedness. If one were to judge from her example, Hylian women apparently shaved their legs but not their armpits.

I started moving. First short and tentative steps, then a walk, and then a stiff but determined trot. Eyes and stunned faces turned to follow me. They lingered on the sword in my hand. Heads cocked and fingers rose to trembling lips. Shaking hands traced the sign of the Triforce. As I finally broke into a run, the sword flashed silver in a dozen gazes.

Go. Go, go _go!_ My face set, my body protected by nothing more than a thick sheet of linen, my skin still damp and my soaked hair slither-sliding across my shoulders . . . I ran. I ran! _I ran!_

Thunderous, roaring, immense, and overwhelming: All was banks of hot mist, blurring painted landscapes, and the terrified eyes of onlookers. Bare toes slashing through puddles. The damp, muffled thump of my feet slapping hardwood. A head-rush throb of twilight and purposeful fury.

My bones buzzed. My tendons sang.

From ahead came another burst of Karrik's hateful voice, words incomprehensible. I followed it. Around a corner, and then another – I followed it. Those growling shouts were like tom-tom beats on the surface of my brain, urging me forward, doubling my pace.

My improvised garment billowed and fluttered about my thighs.

I rounded one last corner. My feet skidded and my breath heaved against my ribs and the dying light seemed to pulse in my eyes.

Thus, I came into the reception area of the third floor, beyond the paper maze and the steaming rows of hidden stone tubs. The reception area, with its little desk and fine ornamental rails that surrounded the stairs leading back below. The reception area, with its wide clean floorboards and its pleasing openness. The reception area, soaked in light the color of overripe tangerines.

Before the receiving dais stood two figures. At their feet were three more – two crouched and shaking, and one more crumpled like a forgotten, life-size doll. The two goron women quaked and made whistling noises that could only be weeping.

I recognized the Shiekah woman who had taken my bath token. Her fine hair was matted with jellied red splotches. Those astonishing, vibrant eyes stared out at me dull as the curves of old tea kettles. One delicate hand still clutched at the precise slash across her throat. Cooling blood dribbled between her fingers.

Deep in my chest, something clenched hard as a white-knuckle fist.

Above the dead woman rose the scuffed riding boots and dusty black trousers of Karrik Fir-Bulbin. Blood still dripped from the tip of the rapier he clutched in one hand. Half the buttons on his vest were undone and his fine hair was disheveled. His hard gray eyes swept back and forth in wild arcs, seeing and not seeing.

Beside Karrik stood another moblin – slightly taller, broader of shoulder, and built like a massive beer keg. He had the same slate-gray skin and white hair as Karrik. His own hair was sheared short as a soldier's across an egg-shaped skull. Tusks like little scimitars jutted between his thick lips. Like Karrik, his clothes were of fine and intricate make – a white tunic, burgundy vest with silver buttons, dark riding pants, high boots, and patent leather gloves that covered large and powerful hands. This second moblin wore a black greatcoat that trailed down to his knees; it was dust-powdered at the edges and topped with ostentatious gold braid about the shoulders. A thin chain trailed from one of the coat's front pockets, snaked its way up the moblin's solid shoulder, and ended on the copper rim of a monocle. The polished lens sat over an eye that was like a circle of ash on a plate of bone.

There was something tight and calm and almost bored about this newcomer. His presence made my calves twitch and my head ache. He was the first to turn and react to my presence. The big moblin did so with a sly, restrained smile.

Karrik continued shouting, heedless of my presence. "FACE ME, YOU BASTARD! FACE ME IF YOU WISH TO PROVE YOURSELF NOT A COWARD! FACE ME AND –" At last he turned just enough, eyes widening, and took in that I had in fact come to face him. Karrik's words choked, whistled, and became, ". . . You."

"Me," I acknowledged.

The stink of the room caught up to me. Sweat and fear and blood. Hot wet metal and salt. Something with the acrid edge of old urine left on bathroom tiles. I sniffed and felt my stomach go sour. My gaze kept flitting to the dead woman, her blood seeping across the floor, and the final terror frozen in her eyes.

Karrik stopped moving. He looked me over angrily, his initial surprise melting into an expression that was at once furious and nonplussed.

"What in Hell are you wearing?" Karrik barked.

I took a quick look at myself. Jesus. I had really done it this time, hadn't I? I wished the weird adrenal cloud over my thoughts hadn't dissipated.

Before I could answer, the big moblin in the black coat let loose a baritone chuckle. With a jolly rumble, he took a step forward and declared, "Oh, Karrik. You never were much for the history of the Peoples, were you?" He swung a gloved hand my direction. "This is a peaceful gesture! He comes to us clothed as one of the chieftains of old, brother!" His speech was as measured, genial, and utterly inhuman as Karrik's. There was a playful edge to it that unnerved me.

Karrik blinked, opened his mouth, and then shut it with a hard _click_ of colliding teeth. He hissed, "Goha koh!" Two throaty clicks, each different in pitch. "Stop mocking me."

The barrel-bellied moblin frowned. "Oh, do grow a sense of humor, brother. Not everything must be some grim vigil, held silent on the eve of battle."

"You promised me . . . _promised _me . . ." Karrik growled.

"Excuse me?" I interjected.

Both moblins' gray faces turned toward me.

I pointed at the newcomer with the sword, very aware of the weight of the gesture. "Who the fuck are you?" I asked. Had I really thought about it – and even though I was still half-stoned on a cocktail of panic, adrenaline, endorphins, and misplaced heroism, I could still _think _– I should have been able to figure that question out on my own. Somewhere in the back of my head, a tiny voice shrieked that this was silly, this was stupid, that I needed to turn and _run_. Get away. Get the fuck away.

The newcomer turned a bit and really gave me the once-over. When he moved, his coat flapped open just enough to reveal a scabbard hung at his side. The monocle over his right eye flashed like trapped fire as he nodded. He laughed again, and there was an edge to it. "Just as bold as you say, brother. Just as bold as you say." He grinned. The expression was just shy of terrifying on a moblin. "I apologize, stranger! As you can well see, this is something of a, ah, _unusual _situation, and my manners have fled me."

He bowed with a dramatic flourish. "My name is Captain Elkan Fir-Bulbin! I am lately of Lord Ganon's Second Irregular Division. Raiders, as it were. Southern purview." He raised eyes like pyre soot and smirked. "I'm told that you engaged some of my cavalrymen yesterday. My brother was, ah, quite _distressed _by your bold interference with his mission. Made all due speed to inform me of you. I have been looking forward to meeting you. The last day has quite built you up in my mind, I must say. And now, face to face . . ." He trailed off with a little grunt.

"Yes?" I spat.

He shrugged. "You are tall, but pale and scrawny as a monk after a fast. You slouch. Your hair is that of a woman's, your sword is a bloody antique, and I have a terrible feeling that," his great snout wrinkled in distaste, "you forgot to even put on smallclothes before you came to meet us. I must say that I'm somewhat unimpressed."

Something about this made me smile. I shrugged in turn. "I have to admit that I was in a bit of a hurry."

Elkan laughed like an old friend hearing a private joke. "Jolly good, stranger! Though I am disappointed not to find the terrible dervish my brother described," Karrik made a noise of disapproval, "you do have spirit. That I must give you."

Suddenly, Elkan ceased speaking, did a double-take, and then let his jaw go slowly slack. His gaze traveled from my face and lingered, blinking, on the sword in my hand. He said softly, "You lied to me, brother. You said he was Hylian!"

With a pointing stab of his sword, Karrik fumed, "What are you blathering about? What the hell else would he be, you koh bagrak?"

A deep sigh; a tilt of the chin in my direction. "This is why you are not considered for office, brother. His ears. Look at his ears."

Karrik squinted at me hatefully.

I realized suddenly that I should be moving. Pacing a bit. Pulling myself together, making myself look more physically imposing. You're wearing a bath towel toga, you stupid bastard. How imposing can you possibly fucking look? Had my innards not been pulling themselves every which way, I might have laughed.

"So, an outerlander," Elkan said casually. He folded his arms and gave me a wry look.

His brother swung his eyes from me to the captain and then back to me. Loathing like searing coals glowed in his expression.

My lips quivered and then opened. "Yeah?" I managed. "I'm not really from around here. What of it?"

"It is just interesting," Elkan mused. "Very interesting."

At the moblins' feet, one of the goron attendants let loose a big, shuddery sob.

"Elkan . . .!" Karrik growled.

Blood on the floor, growing dark and gooey. Bronze eyes grown cold and glassy.

"What the hell is all this about?!" I suddenly yelled. Words before thought; action before consideration. Might as well ride it all the way. "Why did you have to kill her?!"

"Bold!" Elkan whispered.

Before his brother could get in another word, Karrik darted forward and raised his sword. "She was in my way!" he shouted. His voice went low and cold and skimmed across the surface of some terrible mania. "Her screams were most distressing. I had to stop them. Had to make an example. Make you know that I am most serious." Every feature on his porcine face hardened into a single insane mask of hatred. "And you cannot tell me that you do not know what this is about! I told you that I would have vengeance for your interference! For what you did!"

I cocked my head and brushed a half-damp bit of hair from my cheek. "You had no right to attack those people. I had to stop you."

Something devilish rose in me, then. A familiar, fluttering sensation that was both frightening and rapturous. "That reminds me," I said happily. "How's the dude whose arm I took? The little fucker who gave me this beauty?" I lightly touched the stitches puckering my cheek.

Karrik's sword wobbled and his lips peeled back from his teeth. "You mean Lam? Lam Frih-Sokkor?" His face constricted with repressed fury. "Lam, who learned to hunt with me as a child? Lam, who sang the Song of Songs on my wedding day? Lam, who was as much a brother to me as Elkan, you palebelly piece of shit?!" Karrik shook now, from head to boots.

"Brother . . ." Elkan drawled. "Calm yourself."

Karrik glanced at his brother, still trembling with rage, and seemed to have to consciously will himself to stop. He turned back to me and hissed, "He will live. Lam will live, but will never fight for the cause again."

"Good," I said. The sadistic, demon sensation danced through my abdomen and up through my chest. Karrik's rage propelled it – an awful, buzzing sense of excitement.

"Perhaps you're not as clever as I first thought," Elkan said. His voice had grown slightly bored.

I tried to ignore him, continuing, "So this is all about getting revenge for fucking up your friend?"

Though he still trembled with anger, Karrik managed a sly little grin. "No one interferes with the affairs of Clan Bulbin and comes away untouched," he said. "We are agents of a great and wonderful war, outerlander. Agents of change and liberation. Though it's obvious that you are as prejudiced against my people as any palebelly Hylian –"

"Hey now. I totally didn't know –"

"– the mere fact that you stood against me marks you for retribution. Yes, I will have vengeance. Yes! But this is also another chapter in our great struggle for freedom."

"You were going to kill an innocent family!" I shouted. "How the fuck can you factor that into your 'struggle?' What kind of fucked up morals are you fighting for?!"

Karrik made a dismissive gesture. "I piss on your 'morals,' outerlander! I piss on them from a very great height."

"Indeed," Elkan echoed. "My brother may have far too short a temper, but he is still family. _My _family." He spread his arms theatrically. "You don't know what we've been through, outerlander. We tried to coexist with the Hylians. Clan Bulbin was one of the first to join the Civilized Tribes. We adopted their language, their clothing, their foods and crafts. We worshipped their vile pagan goddesses and attended their schools. And what did we receive in turn?" Elkan clapped his hands together and snarled, "Ridicule! Scorn! Hatred! At every turn, the Hylians returned our gestures of peace with enmity and betrayal. Though we scraped and bowed and tried to conform to their grotesque rules, these fine 'moral' people could not accept us. They sabotaged us from the very day we left the mountains and threw down our swords."

"Jesus," I breathed. "Who _are _you?"

Tusks glistened with a pleased smile. "My dear lad – before Lord Ganon called me to war, I was a professor of art, history, and philosophy at the University of Hylium. The only, ah, _moblin_ to ever hold such a position. One could say that I found an even higher calling."

For some seconds, I didn't know how to respond to this. My mouth worked fish-like. The tendons on my neck flexed painfully. Finally, I squeaked, "Can't we just talk this out, then? I get where you're coming from. I really do."

"You mean," Elkan said playfully, "since I was once a man of the academy, you believe that we can overcome this dispute through logic and applied reason? Speak as gentlemen before a negotiating table?"

"Yeah. Something like that."

Mad basso laughter resonated into the rafters. Elkan Fir-Bulbin laughed and laughed and laughed, until the sound of it seemed to batter at my eardrums. Karrik looked on with obvious impatience. When at last Elkan got hold of himself, he wiped spittle away from his lips and grinned like a cat with a rodent beneath its paw.

"Oh, my boy. My dear outerlander lad. No. No no no. I have come this far to kill you. I intend to help my brother hunt you down like a gohma and spike your head atop my banner. You have insulted the honor of my clan. And yes," the smile began to fade, "Lam is my friend, too. The moment I saw him dragged into my camp, all but dead, I knew that I would make whoever had done that to him die screaming."

Instinctively, I pulled the Master Sword up into what I thought might possibly be a defensive position. "B-back off!" I croaked. "I fucked you all up once before. More than that! I, I can take you. Take you both."

"Gods above and below!" Elkan sighed. "You are exactly as stupid as Karrik said you were. Do you think that we are so vain as to follow you – into a city of the enemy, no less – alone?" An expression of homicidal joy spread across his face. My skin felt like it might crawl off my body and attempt to hide in one of the baths. "No, outerlander. No again. We are just the outer face of this merry expedition. Just the vanguard."

Elkan Fir-Bulbin (_Captain of Lord Ganon's southern raiders_) raised fingers to his lips and let loose a high, trilling whistle. He shouted a clacking word in his moblin language. "Come, then," he laughed. "Come."

So they came. They came from behind the partition corners – hiding places, alcoves, little shadows where they had leaned and waited and listened patiently. Now, they loped out through falls of umber light with eager, spastic movements.

All had very dark mottled skin and long, ugly faces. Shades of black, iron gray, and bruised purple. Awful teeth flashed behind lips like wounds. Noses that were little more than flat gashes. Eyes like those of cave fish. Boils and scars dotted their arms. White hair strung in tangled braids and topknots. Some came bare-chested; a few others wore loose leather vests and ancient chainmail hauberks. They stumped forth in boots of pig leather and sandals of rough hemp and plasterboard. Weapons – weapons in seemingly every gnarled little hand. Spears and short swords and an axe and two rusty cleavers that clicked together with a maestro's rhythm.

One wore a crude wooden mask, made from a single chunk of deadwood and painted with swirling red designs that reminded me of blood droplets spreading through water. Another stared at me with pale eyes from beneath the rim of a well-made and well-maintained top hat. He leaned against his tall spear, puffed out his cheeks, and projected a brown comet of tobacco spit onto the floor.

A rolling stink: Baked-in sweat and cook fire smoke and something like rancid, congealed fat left on a butcher's block.

"Bokoblins," I muttered, as if this was some awesome revelation. I realized that the Master Sword, though still clutched in my hand, had fallen to my side. My head turned as the gang of creatures – none any taller than my Adam's apple, but all corded with muscle and armed to the teeth – spread out in a circle about me. They ringed the reception area like an audience. I'm a little surprised that my stunned brain had the wherewithal to count them – eight, total. With Karrik and Elkan, that made ten. Ten opponents against one of me.

Oh Jesus. Oh fucking Christ.

Elkan giggled to himself and held up a gloved hand to his retinue. He pronounced some more foreign words and then said, "Anything to say, outerlander? Any brave words about honor or morality before we begin?"

Sweat ran across my shoulder blades and disappeared into the linen of my toga. I felt my knees shaking. Nothing in my body felt quite solid. "You can't possibly think you're going to get away with this," I said. "When I came into town, the walls were fucking crawling with guards. They have to know you're here by now."

A mocking cackle. Karrik crowed, "How do you think we entered this place, you dolt? My brother's men have been following you ever since you piled onto those idiots' little wagon."

A quick memory, thought a dream – distant shapes, traveling like swift ghosts across the hilltops.

"We slipped men into the town shortly after you arrived. They sent courier hawks to our gathered forces. Even now, the rest of the southern raiders are engaging this town's defenses. With their distraction, my brother and I came over the walls to confront you directly. We have men covering every entrance and exit to this building." Karrik grinned and tapped the edge of his sword against the floor. "There's no escape. And no one is coming to save you."

"All for me?" I said. "I'm flattered."

"Oh, indeed!" Elkan chuckled. "If you have not already figured it out, I have committed almost all of my resources to this little soiree, outerlander. As such, I would, ah, _appreciate _it if you do give us good sport."

I heard something, then. Something like a monstrous gout of steam rising from the stairwell behind Karrik and Elkan. Like the growl of a train engine.

"Ah, good," Elkan said. He glanced over his shoulder. "Looks as if Yrbor finally responded to my call."

"No," one of the gorons whimpered. She tried to shuffle away from Elkan's boots, toward the reception desk. "Oh no no no."

"Yrbor?" I asked. It was an automatic response – no real curiosity in it. More like some dim, rising sense of horror.

"My wolfos!" Elkan beamed. "Karrik's is coming as well, I should hope. A bit runty for my taste, but fine enough for riding. Yrbor, though, is the finest wolfos mount in all of Ganon's army. If I might brag, of course."

Wolfos. I knew wolfos. Did I know wolfos? Why did I have the feeling that I would soon know, whether I wanted to or not?

"Oh," I said absently. On the floor, both gorons now wept openly, on the edge of hysteria. Something big chuffed impatiently down the stairway. "Glad to see you're upholding an old fantasy villain cliché," I muttered. For some reason, I could not get myself to blink.

"Hrm? What's that, now?" Elkan asked distractedly.

All about us, the spectator bokoblins had begun to whisper, grunt, and titter.

Something huge and long and dark as a storm cloud rose up out of the stairwell. It was as big as a Clydesdale and moved with an awful lupine grace. Sparse, bristly hair covered its tightly-muscled body. It padded along on claws like chitinous Bowie knives. A saddle and stirrups sat atop its low-slung back. Elkan clucked happily to it and it swiveled its head to meet his voice.

It was a lucky thing that there wasn't much in my bladder to let go. Just a tiny dribble, spilling out invisibly across my clammy thigh. I blinked and swooned and wondered if I might wake up soon, howling in a mental hospital bed.

Yrbor the wolfos had a long, hairless muzzle that terminated in a wet black nose the size of a small car's engine block. Its eyes were nearly hidden under brow-folds of cartilage and piled skin. What I saw of them was red and empty as murder. Wolfos had no lips. Two rows of teeth like the edge of a cracked saw blade ran along Yrbor's jaws – the maw of a crocodile. The creature curled like a bank of smoke and made its way to the side of its master. He ran a gloved hand across its pelt and smiled approvingly. As it took sight of me, it snuffled in through its massive nose with that same steam-engine sound from before.

Behind Yrbor came another wolfos, somewhat smaller and lighter in coloring. It stayed well away from the bigger animal, as if in deference. It trotted up out of the stairwell and made its way cautiously onto the reception floor. When it saw the whole situation, it whined deep in its throat – a noise like a bad transmission.

I swayed on my feet.

"Oh, don't pass out," Elkan crooned. "That would be rather unsportsmanlike." He took hold of the bridle atop his wolfos, and then awkwardly boosted his ample frame up into the saddle. Yrbor bore this with a patience that seemed uncanny. It clacked its massive jaws like a lizard eager for hidden prey.

"What . . . what the fuck are you doing?" I said in a dazed voice. "Aren't you going to kill me?"

"Oh, certainly," Elkan said. Behind him, Karrik was hoisting himself onto his own terrifying mount. "But we intend to have a spot of fun with it." The moblin captain reached down and pulled the fastenings on a long leather scabbard attached to his saddle. It unrolled with a velvety hiss. When his hand rose once more, it now gripped the shaft of a long and gleaming halberd.

"We'll give you a minute's head start, outerlander," Elkan announced.

"Too long," Karrik snapped.

"Fine," Elkan said, rolling his eyes. "Forty-five seconds. You have forty-five seconds before I send my men to go and play. And then my brother and I will ride for you, little rabbit."

They loomed above me: A creature vomited from my daytime fantasies, perched on a monster culled from my nightmares. No time to think. No time to reason. All I had now . . . All I had was a sword, a towel, and the strength of my legs.

I can't die like this. I won't die like this. I felt tears wick at the corners of my eyes. Fear and shame and something . . . something like . . . no. Couldn't be.

_I won't fucking die like this!_

Elkan Fir-Bulbin pointed the keen axe-head of his halberd at me and bellowed, "Come now! Show me what you showed my brother, hero! Let's see if you deserve that little sword of yours! What is it that the Hylian nobles say? Ah, yes." An exulting, psychotic grin. "Tally-ho!"


	12. 12

**12**

Run run just run.

I didn't move.

_Run_, you dumb fucker!

"Sometimes, when confronted with a bright lantern or torch, a rabbit will freeze in place," Elkan rumbled. "Thirty seconds, outerlander."

_GO!_

I did. My upper torso pivoted before my legs got the message, and I hurtled out of the reception area at a blind, awkward lope. Cackles, clanging metal, and a chorus of shouts clawed at my back. The toga slipped and chafed about my midsection with every bumbling stride.

Oh God. Oh God oh God oh God. Where the hell am I going? Where the hell _can _I go? Focus. Just –

I took the first corner, back into the avenues between the sheltered baths. Hot foamy smells. Lanterns swayed at my approach.

A bath attendant stepped into my path from between the partitions. His eyes drew wide, and then I was elbowing him away. A sharp blow to a soft middle. He cried out in pain before sweeping from my sight. For a moment, his angry wheezing remained behind me. I whipped to the right around the next corner and he was gone entirely.

Jesus Christ, Linus!

No time to think, then. No time to figure out an escape route. No clever plan. I felt my legs slow their harried pumping as I suddenly realized that not only did I not have a plan of action, I didn't even know where I was. My feet thumped and bumbled to a stop. I gasped for breath.

No. I did not have a single clue as to where I was in relation to anything else. The atrium stretched out in the gloaming, uniform shades of twilight. Through the drifts of steam and the dying light that sifted from above, the aisles between the painted screens all looked the same.

My brow furrowed. My toes curled and twitched. I had taken a . . . But then I . . . Surely I was a good distance from –

"TIME'S UP, YOU BASTARD! WE'RE COMING!"

Not far enough. Almost a dozen gnarled voices rose up over the dividers and squabbled like terrible bats among the eaves. Then came a hideous, gut-liquefying cry – a rasping howl that overpowered all other voices and summoned panicked screams from other bathhouse patrons.

"Fuck fuck _fuck_!" I muttered. My legs hammered back into action. I took off down the present aisle. Watercolor portraits and landscapes ran together at my sides. Scared faces darted from open bath nooks to follow my passing.

My bare foot struck a patch of water. I slipped, arms windmilling. The Master Sword pulled at me like a flailing anchor. The world spun, became a dark blur, and then rushed to meet me.

There was a hard _splud _as my shoulder collided with the floor. Jagged shards of pain burst through my shoulder blade and scattered into my collarbone. I cried out. No words; just a tone-deaf bellow of agony and frustration.

Up. Up up _up_!

Suddenly, there were quick footsteps behind me. A croaking, excited little voice. Breath running ragged and phlegm-ridden through gaping nostrils.

As sprawled out and helpless as I was, I still looked. The bokoblin came down the avenue with a nervous, twitching gait. Its skin was the color of cough syrup mixed badly with roofing tar. Its mouth was a twist of broken crockery. In its hand was a big, rusty knife of the sort used to scrape tendons from bone. It gibbered happily and advanced on me at a bow-legged trot.

The sword had slipped from my grasp in the fall. It laid several feet away, blade pointing toward my outstretched hand. I groaned, pushed myself up with my other arm, and reached out with half-numb fingers. My eyes left the approaching bokoblin for less than five seconds.

And suddenly it was _there_, mere feet away – a giggling, stinking monstrosity in boiled leather. Its shadow fell across me. When I swung my eyes back up, the failing light turned the bokoblin into a stunted silhouette against a cascade of dark gold. The knife rose and its chipped edge gleamed dull silver.

I thought nothing – just a senseless babble of obscenities that ran through my head like a chant. Even as my fingers slipped over the top of the Master Sword's blade, my body was moving convulsively. A fight-or-flight motion; no purpose other than pure reaction. My abdomen jerked and my legs slashed out. The flesh of my thighs squeaked against the enameled surface of the floorboards.

My foot caught the bokoblin in its shin, throwing it off-balance. It spasmed, swayed, and made a noise like an abortive belch. I kicked again – weaker this time, less of a surprise. The blow struck the bokoblin in its left calf and made it stumble back further. It flailed its knife ineffectually, as if hoping it might catch something – _anything_ – as it tumbled out of reach.

A world away, my fingers squeezed about the flat of the Master Sword. It made a terrible skittering sound as I pulled it the remaining distance to my body.

With a roar and a shake of its ugly head, the bokoblin righted itself and immediately charged.

I didn't even have time to get my hands properly around the sword's hilt. Instead, I clutched my fingers sloppily about the sword's cross-guard and swept it up from the floor in a wild zigzag. I hissed and squinted as invisible pins danced out from my shoulder. A quick-darting shape sprung back from my blind attack. Teeth clacked together in frustration. I struggled up to one knee just in time to see my opponent lunge forward.

The Master Sword bobbled awkwardly between my sweat-slicked fingers. No time to adjust my grip. No time to try another half-assed warding swoop of the blade. Instead, I sprang up stiffly and planted my left foot as the cackling horror came at me. It pulled back the knife and grew a scarred, slobbery grin.

Stink of sweat and rotting gums. Behind that, the sweet perfumes of the bathhouse like watching ghosts.

I threw my shoulders right. My left foot shot out and slid into the pool of water that had initially tripped me. The net result: My entire body propelled itself to the right, all semblance of balance and control fleeing as it went. The bokoblin's pale eyes registered the movement but its body kept moving. Its knees struck my outstretched leg. Rough, feverish skin met my own. Bone bounced off of bone. An ugly, nauseating sensation. Its feet left the floor with a bright squelching sound, and all at once I was again fumbling to the ground.

Thankfully, I tangled up in the bath towel for a softer landing. I also managed to slide the Master Sword into my off hand so I didn't slash myself up with it on impact. I couldn't tell if my bokoblin pal had ended up any better, but I could hear it groaning in pain behind me, unseen.

Ha. Eat it, you ugly turd.

I rose uncertainly to my feet. My knees shook and I had to pull damp clumps of hair away from my eyes. Mad, hot needles scuttled down my arms and legs.

Over my shoulder, someone gasped. I spun about to see a middle-aged woman in a bathrobe, leaning out from between the dividers. She took in the whole horrible scene from behind lank brown bangs. When her frightened eyes met my own, she blinked rapidly, as if in shock or confusion. Splayed out between the both of us was the bokoblin, his eyelids fluttering (and it _was _a "he," as I could now see under his shabby loincloth dangly bits that were as bruised and distorted as the rest of him).

I tried to adjust my toga with one hand, growled with annoyance, and then made a shooing motion. The woman nodded and ducked back into the safety of her bath nook.

Somewhere off in the jumble of the crowded atrium, a man shouted in alarm. A thick snarl followed, audible even over the sounds of desperate panic that warbled from between the partitions. A few feet away, the bokoblin hissed and flopped out an arm, trying to find surer purchase on the slick floor.

Kill him. Slash his throat! Jam the sword between his ribs! Stab him in the belly! Spill his fucking blood and be done with it! Make sure he never gets back up! Do _anything_, you idiot!

I could feel the jerry-rigged toga sliding down off my left shoulder. A bead of stinging sweat dribbled into the corner of my eye. I blinked and adjusted my grip on the sword and lifted it hesitantly above my helpless foe. Whatever swam in the huge, dazed eyes below me was indecipherable.

Cascading amber light fell over me. All at once, I was standing on green-edged stone tiles. Before me, something foul and hideous clutched at the spurting wound in its neck. Blood and shit and raw earth swam in my nostrils. A far-off, frantic squealing. The unmistakable pleading look of mortal fear. Eyes that must have, in some bygone age, once known innocence.

No. It tried to kill you. It would have killed you if it had the chance.

The sword shook in my hands.

Does it even matter? Do they even . . . Can they even possibly exist? Can _any _of this possibly be real? The soap and sweat and prickling hairs on my thighs and the raw sensation in the back of my throat all felt real enough. Real enough.

The bokoblin gurgled. Its pale eyes slide back into some pitiful approximation of focus. Its (_his_, yes, _his_) hand tightened about the handle of the knife.

"THERE YOU ARE!"

My gaze snapped away and traveled down the length of the aisle, from where I had come. Through the swirling twilit murk, a shape half reptilian and half lupine advanced. It stalked through the pools of candlelight and fading duskglow like something emerged from an unbelievably antediluvian age. Atop it rode a coiled body brandishing a curve of sharp silver. A hate-hardened face like a mask used in rituals paid for with blood. Karrik Fir-Bulbin snapped the reins of his wolfos and both rocketed at me with a speed that defied sense.

Six lithe bounds and they were upon me. Each time the wolfos's claws struck the floor, they produced a disturbingly hollow clacking sound. It brought with it a sour, oily scent like hair left unwashed for week. Within moments, I was within the killing distance of both Karrik's sword and a maw like a living rock crusher. Four feet in front of me, now. Three. Hot breath sprayed from the beast's wide nostrils and blew across my face. Eyes like smoldering coals locked on me and only me.

My feet moved without a thought to guide them. They slipped and shuffled as if over a dojo floor. All that went through my mind was a din of terror-panic-survival instinct static. My limbs seemed to go numb and become detached, alien things not quite under my control. Still my legs wheeled beneath me, carrying me back at a manic uncontrollable pace that threatened to pitch me over yet again.

Too slow. Too awkward. The monster and its master had me.

God bless the laws of physics and the well-documented inability of dogs to navigate hardwood floors. I learned there, in the damp heart of Oloro's bathhouse, that these rules apply just as strongly to giant, monstrous semi-dogs as well.

On its last, perfect leap down the avenue, Karrik yanked on the reins and attempted to stop his mount. Muscles roiled just beneath the creature's rheumy skin. Its limbs went rigid . . . And it kept going. Its claws screeched across the shining finish atop the floorboards. The animal let loose a whine-whistling cry and its paws started scrambling in a panicked, momentum-borne dance. I might have laughed had there not been a wall of wolfos flesh now bearing down on me.

I dodged left. My feet slid wetly across the corridor. The wolfos tried to twist toward me as I moved out of its path, and lipless jaws snapped at my side. The desperate movement spun the abominable thing about and sent it crashing shoulder-first into one of the wood stands that held up the partitions. The entire line of paper dividers rocked back and forth. Splashes and frightened cries beyond. Moblin curses filled the air.

Stop, stomp, and pivot: I turned and blindly stabbed, flexing every muscle in my upper body as I went. Struck nothing; fell back with the Master Sword making loose loop-the-loops in my sweat-addled grip. Karrik and his wolfos squirmed back into position. Saw teeth clicked together. It fell back on its haunches and hissed like an alligator.

Glance left, glance right: The bokoblin, previous occupant of my Worst Thing in the World slot, propped itself up on one elbow and watched the unfolding showdown with an unsettling alien gaze. Further to my left was the turn I had taken to come down this particular avenue, now shrouded in the growing darkness of the atrium. To my right, the aisle between the secreted baths went on for some yards before coming to another four-way intersection. The variegated light of paper lanterns revealed that way to be empty except for a pair of dropped buckets and a discarded towel.

The wolfos's front paws flexed. Its claws dug audibly into the floorboards.

My breath hitched. Decision time. Can't take this thing on. One bite, one slash, one lucky stroke of Karrik's rapier . . . Decide decide _decide_!

Down the corridor, flickering light shone on two more of the sort of standing pools that had tripped me as I had run this direction. One of them was no more than seven or eight feet away.

"Your move, palebelly," Karrik panted. He gave his sword a playful little swing. Beneath him, his mount chuffed in approval.

I could taste the sweat on my lips. I could smell it going rank in the crevices of my body.

Do it. Now. I broke right. Instantly, the wolfos shot out to follow. Its flanks heaved. Its jaws opened, and I could see glistening streamers of saliva stretch between the rows of uneven razor teeth. A paw the size of my head flew out. Extended claws like daggers rushed for my face.

I dropped. My leg muscles went taut in anticipation of impact, but the ball of my foot hit the lukewarm edge of the nearest pool just in time. Slick momentum took hold of me, and I fell into a bastard imitation of a baseball slide. The wolfos's powerful body passed over me and vanished into evening shadow. Safe!

. . . But not. Though the momentum of hitting the watery patch had carried me out of Karrik's immediate reach, it would only take me forward a couple more yards. I grunted, tucked, rolled, and forced myself back to my feet. My shoulder complained about the maneuver, but the brief pain was a small price to pay for this chance. Feet still wet from my waterslide escape stumbled beneath me. It took a moment of slip-sliding surprise to correct my gait. Then, I was off again. I dashed down the avenue, sure that Karrik and his wolfos were right on my moist heels.

Truth be told, both hope and pride glimmered in me then. Hope – that I actually had a chance to make it out of this alive. Pride – that I had actually outmaneuvered Karrik and his pet horror, even managing to pull off that slide-roll trick while hanging on to the Master Sword. God, what a fucking stunt! And he fell for it, the stupid –

Why was it suddenly so cold?

It was more difficult to look down and sprint at the same time than I thought possible. The initial inspection produced only incredulity – I must of have seen wrong. Another pass then, seemingly in filmic slow motion. There were my feet, slamming down against smooth planks and driving me forth like a maddened gazelle. The muscles of my calves and thighs stretched and writhed with each pounding step. Hairs tickled in the acceleration-breeze of my escape. My chest and arms and belly shone with moisture – sweat, condensation, and bathwater that had never had any time to properly dry.

A brief look. No more than a second. The disconnect of the missing piece didn't strike me for at least two more.

Oh. Oh no.

Not surprisingly, it was even harder to look back during a dead run. Just a quick whip of the neck muscles, really. A glance in the direction I was fleeing from was all I needed: There Karrik's wolfos stood, strangely still, breath heaving from its open maw and a sandpaper gray tongue sliding across its dozens of teeth. Before it was the puddle I had used to slide out of its reach. And on the edge of that puddle was a crumpled off-white towel.

Oh shit. Oh shit!

So, I was naked. Naked but for the sword in my right hand, slowing my steps and muddling my footing. Great going, Linus. Fucking fantastic work. How fucking long would it have taken to slip on some boxers, at the very least? You only have a half-dozen fucking pairs of them. Instead: Bath towel toga. Outstanding. Absolutely goddamn outstanding.

And now I didn't even have that kind little illusion between me and my pursuers. Just me and the Master Sword. Just my body. My bone-jutting, gangly, awkward body. And a piece of sharp metal.

How was it ever different, though? I thought. It's not as if you were wearing full plate armor when you fought these guys a day ago.

I laughed sardonically. How could I not? I was streaking through the middle of a bathhouse in a dream world half-sculpted from beauty and half from sheer terror. I'm sure that at any other time – any other point in the history of the world – the warm, wet wind whipping about my undercarriage would have been exhilarating.

I leaned into the run and doubled my pace. The intersection of divider-borne avenues loomed up ahead. A steady _tick-tack-tick-tack _sound echoed at my heels and exposed buttocks: The unhurried steps of Karrik's wolfos as it ambled after me. I readied myself to fake left, and then make a jagged turn down the right corridor.

A bloated purple belly appeared about the coming right corner. A sense of tension below it. Knobby knees poked from the edge of the dividers. Legs quivered, anxious for prey.

Shit. Another bokoblin. No faking, then: Just left, and on until whatever. On until the life fled my lungs.

Legs slowed, aching; heart sped up; lips parted and throat drew a mighty breath. I broke into a dead sprint and curved left into the adjoining aisle.

Silky shadows. Then, light like a blood orange spilled from a high window and flooded the avenue. A black shape cut through it like doom manifest. Elkan Fir-Bulbin rose up before me, a statue of some conquering demon come to life. Pure exultation painted his face as his wolfos reared up on its hind legs. Yrbor's front claws shone like scythes of black diamond.

I never stopped running. Didn't stop to try and face down the raider commander or his hell-mutt. When I entered the new corridor, I did so at an angle that curved my steps toward the right wall. I somehow coerced an unheralded speed from my stinging limbs. Every breath now tasted of blood and ashes. Sweat licked at my eyes and ran burning along the ridges of the wound on my cheek. As I curved away from the wall, crossed Elkan's path, and swept back out of the left corridor, droplets leapt from my skin and sparkled in the air like falling points of magma.

Something _whooshed_. A cool wind passed over the top of my head. I realize now that I had avoided the arc of Elkan's fine halberd blade by probably less than six inches.

I finished the figure-eight loop that had taken me into, and then out of, the avenue blocked by Elkan. No options, now. In front of me stood the eager little bokoblin that had been waiting for me in ambush. He bore a nasty butcher's cleaver in each hand. Fresh blue-white scars ran across his boney cheeks. To my right – the corridor I had just evacuated myself from – I knew Karrik stalked. That first stunned bokoblin probably followed quickly in his wake. And behind me came Elkan, surely with a smile on his porcine lips. I could hear him humming a jaunty tune.

No. No option at all. No ladies, all tigers. Even though I couldn't see down its length, I hooked left and proceeded down the murky space between yet more private baths.

Almost instantly, I knew I was trapped. The light from the atrium windows had died more quickly on this end of the bathhouse. I ran into pervasive, candlelit gloom. All the same, I could see the three misshapen figures waiting down the avenue. I could hear their gurgled breath and low titters. And behind . . .

Always a way out. There's always a way out.

A bathing area's numbered sign flashed past me, the white symbol dim in its attendant lamplight.

Of course.

Before I could take a single step closer to the bokoblin welcoming party, I slipped awkwardly between the dividers and into the private bath beyond. A half-dozen rough voices spat in confusion and alarm as I went.

Inside, it was exactly as it had been within my own bathing area. Steam rose in a pleasing curtain from a basin fed by fat pipes. Candles glowed in each corner. Scents of flowers and spices drifted with the mist. Thankfully, the bath was unoccupied.

I allowed myself to stop for a moment and take a long gulp of humid air. Every muscle in my body seemed to twitch and spasm. My lungs, grateful as they were for the breather, still burned at their edges. The shoulder I had landed on had begun to throb dully. I eyed the towel slung across the iron rack in the far corner.

Distantly: "Where did he go?"

Absurd alien chatter. Clicks and trilling hoots. Then, Elkan: "Then go in and find him, you idiots!"

Here we go again. My plan still sat embryonic in my brain even as I approached the paper screen across the room. On it was painted a scene of knights in full armor riding across a foggy moor. Beautiful watercolors that must have cost a small fortune to commission. I winced as I raised my sword and stabbed it.

The screens were indeed paper – rough, fibrous stuff that resisted the point of the sword for a moment before giving way with a ragged _pop_. With the blade of the sword through, I heaved the entire thing down at a diagonal. A hideous ripping noise filled the air. Shit – if they didn't know which stall I went into before, they certainly did now. I ducked through the tear in the partition and into the next bathing area.

A pair of faces greeted me as I entered. Two young people – probably no older than their teens. They sat curled in the bath tub like children frightened of approaching thunder. Both stared at me with big, startled eyes. His hand still snaked around her shoulder and absently cupped her left breast.

I started to bound across the room to the exit, had an errant thought, and then stopped in my tracks. I leaned down and hurriedly whispered, "Do you know where I can find the nearest exit?"

Neither of them spoke. She gawped at me like I had burst forth from a bottle or lamp. I saw her green eyes make arcs between my face and my sword. Disbelief, wonderment, or both stitched up her features.

Finally, the boy said with a thin, whistling accent, "Ah-ah-aye. There's a stairway d-down yonder." He pointed uselessly toward the exit of the bath nook. "Go toward the nearest wall and follow it t-to the corner. C-can't miss it."

Sounds of movement out in the other private bathing areas. Something hurried and clumsy.

"Thanks," I murmured, and left through the front of the couple's bathing area.

I found myself in another long, uniform avenue that stretched left and right. There was no way to get a good idea of the layout of the place – the bokoblins and their moblin taskmasters couldn't be more than a minute or two behind me. To my left, the corridor continued past two more intersections before arriving at the atrium's timber wall. How far that was from the aforementioned stairs, I hadn't the foggiest.

Better to lead these assholes on a treasure hunt than on an open chase, I mused. I spied the opening to the bathing area directly across from the one I had just exited, and set off into it at a jog.

A pair of shrieks at my back. Something twisted in the core of my gut. God, I hope I didn't just get those kids killed. I have enough to worry about.

Another unoccupied bathing area – this one's tub was even empty, a cold stone pit set into the floor. I slashed open the left partition (decapitating some poor golden-haired maiden in the process), went through, and repeated the maneuver on the back wall of the next area I found. I didn't even glance about to see if I was invading someone's privacy this time.

"WHERE ARE YOU, MEDDLER?!"

Karrik's howling voice quavered with near-lunacy. Afterward, Elkan loudly crooned, "Wheeereee arrrre yooouu?" in a falsetto singsong.

I sliced through another partition. And another. I felt like I was cutting through the walls of some incomprehensible, sweet-smelling hive. I stepped into a bathing area to find two attendant gorons huddled in a corner. By their sizes, I guessed a male and a female. They blinked their oiled-paper eyelids and made spastic motions for me to move on. Move anywhere.

Somewhere on the ragged path I had left through the baths, scurrying frantic voices cast about like rats navigating a maze.

"I'M GOING TO START CUTTING MORE THROATS, HERO!"

I barreled through one more screen, shot across another avenue, muttered apologies to a fat woman who examined my nakedness like she was evaluating a show dog, and cut my way into yet another cell of the bathhouse honeycomb. Did it ever goddamn end? In this particular room, a man who had to be around my age shivered against one of the partitions with his knees drawn to his chest. He wore clothes, but they stuck damply to his wet skin. From between twists of blonde hair all too like my own, he watched my approach with naked terror.

I hesitated. "Am I going the right way?" I heaved. "I mean, toward the exit?"

The young man shook harder. His lips trembled apart. He tried to say something, choked on it, and then said something inaudible.

"What?" Time grew short.

His voice was a ragged whisper: "It's you."

I stared at him senselessly. When he said nothing more, I walked past him and out the nook's exit.

Outside, I found my view of the atrium walls to be the best I had had since plunging into the bath spaces. Other than a few whispers and the harried noise of the manhunt behind me, it was quiet in the present avenue. The vaulted windows above were orange and iron gray, as if they looked out over some other, burning world beyond.

Even though I saw no one in either direction, I took off to the left at a wary trot. The two massive walls met ahead, support beams and rafters curving away from the spot like giant's ribs.

"Pssst!"

I started, swinging the Master Sword out with both hands. A strand of hair floated from my forehead and tickled one of my nostrils. I had to puff twice to get it out of the way.

A familiar face protruded from one of the private baths. Blonde beard, lively eyes. A strong chin despite the plump body beneath it. He stared at me like he didn't quite believe in what he was seeing. "Ya' look like you're in a spot o' bother, lad."

I had to sift through a dozen competing thoughts to come up with the man's name. Finally: Mohan Smythe. One of the gentlemen I had met down in the lobby on the first floor, what seemed like months ago. Funny. I had ended up running into him again after all.

I nodded tersely and said, "They're right behind me. Am I headed toward a stairwell?"

"Aye." He twitched his head in the direction of the nearest sloping wall. "It'll be right at the end o' this row. Should take you down to the common baths."

"Thanks," I whispered. I started off in that same direction.

"Wait."

I paused. In some hellish miracle, I managed to become even _more _tense. Acid-sour dread knitted my guts.

Smythe favored me with an intense, inscrutable look. "I been through almost every part o' this place, lad. Advantages o' bein' a man about town. Once you go down those stairs, you're gonna want to look for the first red door. You got that?"

"First red door," I repeated.

"Right. Now, once you're through there, go all the way back through the baths you find. Should be a big pair o' doors that lead," his forehead screwed up in concentration, "into a kind o' service area. Lots o' pipes an' tanks. Just walk straight and you'll find another door that leads into a long spiral staircase. That'll take you all the way down to –"

Monstrous, impassioned gibbers. My buttocks clenched as I turned to see three bokoblins piling out from the bath that I had exited less than three minutes before. One – the dapper fellow wearing a top hat – pointed a spear in my direction and spat a command. Feet slapped hardwood to catch me.

Not an instant wasted: I was off, directions be damned. I heard Mohan Smythe's voice desperately call out: "Just find the staircase, lad! Find the staircase an' the feed pipes an' an', oh Nayru, _the tunnel_!"

Achilles tendons sprang like overworked pistons. My body creaked with a dozen spots of pain and growing exhaustion. The cool slipstream of motion danced and swam about my naked body. I rounded the next bend and almost cried out as the sunken staircase came into view.

Smythe's voice, sounding choked, continued to ring in my ears. "The tunnel, lad! The tunnel!"

In a single sinuous aching movement, I gripped the ornamental railing about the top of the stairs and used it to swing myself into the lamp-lit depths below.


	13. 13

**13**

I took the stairs two at a time. I all but fell down them, the control and grace driven out of my body by my mad need to escape. The brief, breathless euphoria of having reached the stairs was dashed immediately to pieces by the realization that bokoblins were still on my tail. And behind them were Elkan and Karrik Fir-Bulbin, borne along by wolfos like the childhood nightmares I had after watching _Jurassic Park_. And _then_, if Elkan were to be believed, the moblins still had agents posted all through the bathhouse. No – I was not even remotely safe. Not yet. Not by a long, awful shot.

So I let myself careen down the stairs like a meteor. I reached a landing, just barely kept myself from slamming into a wall with the momentum, and turned down the next flight. The hard wood surface of each step slapped painfully against the soles of my feet.

For just a few precious minutes, I had time to really think.

Up until that moment, I had survived mostly on luck, and perhaps my pursuers' overestimation of my abilities. That was all well and good, but such things could only carry me so far. I had to face facts: I was alone and naked, outnumbered almost a dozen to one. Though I had gotten in a few lucky hits with it in the past, I was completely untrained with the sword in my hand. Sure, I still carried the decade-old ghost of a few years of tae kwon do training . . . But that was unarmed combat, and unarmed combat that I had never pursued with much vigor in the first place. The things that I faced tonight came equipped with knives and spears and swords like giant, broken razors.

A plan. I needed a plan. Something other than just following Mohan Smythe's sketchy directions and hoping that they led to escape.

As brutally unskilled as I was with the Master Sword, it still possessed the ability to maim and kill. With the bokoblins apparently broken into single hunters and small search parties, perhaps I could ambush _them _and whittle down their numbers. Not a bad idea, really. Find some cunning hiding spot and wait until they passed . . . and then launch out and cut some fucking heads off!

I squinted and wiped free-flowing sweat from above my eyes.

Ugh. Don't be stupid. How many of them could you realistically kill or cripple before the rest tore you apart? Two? Three? Even if you continued your incredible string of luck? Linus, you're not a goddamn action hero.

Plus, you're naked! Naked!

I giggled and continued to do so almost uncontrollably. The laughter came out in awful, half-hysterical hiccups.

Maybe, I guess, _maybe_ I can split them apart even further. Take them out one at a time. Avoid risks. They're scrappy, but don't seem too bright. Could be easy to confuse them, make 'em even sloppier. Maybe I could –

As if on cue, the sound of leather slapping stairs rained from above. Bokoblin grunts and hisses echoed all about me. Despite the stab of fear that went icily through my chest, I managed to maintain my footing. I didn't look up.

When I had first started down them, I had wondered whether these stairs went all the way to the bottom of the bathhouse like the set I had taken from the lobby. After another turn, I had my answer: The stairwell ended in a softly lit alcove below me. Only the second floor, then. Behind a small, abandoned reception podium was a door to parts unknown. I hit the floor at a jog and pushed through it without a second thought.

My feet met cool tiles. Steam washed against my ankles. Smells of laundry soap, salt, and dank, wet stone swam about me. Instantly, I knew this would probably be trouble.

One section of the communal baths opened up before me. Both the floor and walls were covered in semi-polished stone tiles of alternating gray and dull blue. Light trickled from the same sort of spherical lamps that were in the first floor lobby, hung on chains from a high ceiling. Their glow was soft, white, and seemingly incapable of banishing the shadows that still prowled in the corners. The place was hot and damp and I soon found the floor alarmingly slick beneath by toes.

Unlike the third floor's open, subdivided layout, the second floor was obviously broken into smaller individual chambers. Though undeniably large, I could see across the entire current room and to the opposite wall. At least four other doorways led out of the chamber, off into the gloomy recesses of the second floor. Arranged about the interior of the room were four squared pillars that rose from floor to ceiling. Steamy gouts of water would occasionally gush from spigots about the sides of these structures, tumbling like hot waterfalls into the shallow pools arranged about the base of each pillar. Short, almost ornamental walls divided each pool into a series of bathing areas. By no means private, but certainly not as much a free-for-all as I had been led to believe.

As I banged through the door and bumbled my way into the room, a small army of faces in varying degrees of consternation rose from the baths. All male, across the spectrum in age. Here was a stoop-backed old man with suds still clinging to his thin hair; there was a blonde-haired toddler leaning over the edge of his bath and goggling at me with huge green eyes. Wet beards and bushy, knitted eyebrows. Two gorons, water dripping along the ridges of their dark gray shells, stood no more than two feet away.

Other than the rush and ripple of bathwater, I was greeted with utter silence. Every expression regarded me as if I bore plague sores or was on fire.

A pair of clipped hoots fluttered through the swinging door behind me.

"Bokoblins," I gasped. "Bunch of – they're right behind –" I stepped further into the chamber and watched several mouths twist in apprehension. "Fucking bokoblins!" I managed, and then started back into an awkward run.

Voices erupted at my approach, echoing cavern-like about the chamber. Chunks of words and sentences bombarded my ears.

"Now, lad –"

"What news?!"

"Lad!"

"–quite bothersome, this –"

"What kind o' sick jest –!"

Red door. Red door. I needed to find a red goddamn door. I was well into the room by now, confused and frightened men on all sides. I cast about wildly, seeing only a bruised blur of tile and hearing only a storm of shouts and entreaties. I distinctly heard a withered old voice wheeze, "What in the name o' Din is goin' on?" and then it was _there_: A door painted crimson, set in the wall to my right.

I turned, sprinted, and plowed straight into it. My shoulder ricocheted off the surface of the door. Solid, heavy wood. My bones tolled like chamber bells.

"Fuuuuck!" I shouted.

Over the babbling chorus that buzzed through the baths, I heard the door I had come in through smash open. Yells of confusion stretched into shrill cries of fear and panic.

I grasped an iron ring low on the door and yanked with every muscle in the left side of my body. The door swung open on groaning hinges. Without a single backwards glance, I rushed past it and closed it behind me as tightly as it would go. The sounds of chaos in the other room dropped into muffled yelps and splashes.

Beyond the red door lay another chamber of the communal baths, almost identical to the one I had just exited. Damp tiles, dripping spigots, and an ominous, quiet gloom. No one moved at my sudden entrance. As I continued my run through the chamber, I found that it was empty. Most of the baths were lined only with thin films of water at their bottoms.

Where to now? God, what had Smythe said? To just . . . what? "Follow the baths back?" For fuck's sake, how many ways could I interpret that?

Directly across the room stood another doorway. Red again. I saw other doors in the corners of my eyes, but _this_ . . . Fuck it. How else could I follow Smythe's directions? Keep going straight, and I had to end up _someplace._

I made sure to stop and test the door this time, instead of attempting to break my shoulder against it. Two times the pain of impact continued to radiate through it, making my teeth clench and my eyes water.

When I slipped through this next door, the air suddenly turned thick and harsh as a volcanic jungle. The steam grew so dense it was like fog rolling off a boiling ocean. After turning away from the door, I found that I could barely see more than fifteen feet ahead of me. Oozing through the roiling steam were a legion of disparate scents: Old mildew, slow-baked sweat, obnoxious cologne, and a sharp, almost sweet smoke of the sort I had smelled wafting from a half-dozen pipes and homemade cigarettes over the day. As I walked further into the room, the airborne soup stung my eyes. I realized that the pall swimming about me was probably equal parts smoke to water vapor.

"Oy! This here is a private area! Sod off!"

I blinked. The room about me slowly resolved itself, the angles and figures within it emerging from the vapors like forgotten idols rising from a gray sea.

At first inspection, the place was very like the last two rooms I had passed through on the second floor. The tiling and hanging lamps were exactly the same; so were the low communal pools running along the walls to my left and right. However, this room was smaller, narrower, and more brightly lit than the others. On the walls were mosaics rendered in subdued blues, whites, and grays. To my right was a design depicting the same tearful eye that sat in the center of the rupees; to my left was a mosaic of a knight in gray mail and blue surcoat, lifting his sword skyward. The bathing pools were undivided and stretched out almost to the center of the room, where the floor between formed a kind of perfunctory access corridor. They were fed by drizzling bronze fountains that I thought looked like dragons' heads. Short braziers heaped with coals squatted in the middle of the central walkway, spitting and spewing steam like miniature volcanoes.

"You deaf, son? Or just stupid? I said to sod the fuck off!"

As a recreational drug user, I had learned to recognize certain sorts of people. I never really dabbled in stuff harder than pot – only my acid odyssey and a few ill-fated nights spent experimenting with ecstasy interrupted the steady schedule of weed consumption. That said, just being a part of that subculture meant that I came into contact with cocaine, meth, and ketamine. I met those substance's dealers. I hung out with tweakers and coke fiends. In all that time, I started to recognize the kind of people that I needed to avoid in the future. Hard men and women. People with a kind of feral emptiness lurking just behind their eyes, every ounce of their body language exuding barely-restrained hostility. Connected people who wore specific colors in certain ways or sported tattoos laden with dread symbolism.

I was surrounded by exactly those sorts of men, now. They lounged in the baths like drowsing tigers. I didn't get an exact count of them, but from the doorway I saw at least seven or eight spread about the chamber, all of their stony faces turned my way. Two sat on the edge of their pool with bath towels wrapped about their middles. Some sat propped against the walls, dingy smoke rising from cigarettes.

Numbly, idiotically, I walked further into the room.

In response, a boney figure sprang up from the bath on my left. Though the water couldn't be more than three feet deep, his gaunt frame seemed to surface from its depths as if unfolding from contortionist's box. His face was shapeless and his eyes were sunken gray pinpricks. Round, puckered scars dotted both his shoulders.

"I told you to get out of here, you guttershit," he spat. His teeth were, by turns, the color of urine and chewing tobacco. They jutted from gums like bad meat.

He had a different accent than anyone I had yet to meet in Hyrule. Not _terribly _different. There were still the long vowels and the peculiar not-British, not-Irish lilt. But there was something there that was noticeably different. It was Dallas to Atlanta; Liverpool to London. (Only later – much later – would I really take note of the hard pronunciation of "ing," the strange contractions, and the weird little uptick at the end of seemingly random sentences.)

At first, I couldn't think of anything to say. Here I was, surrounded by men who looked like they'd kill me just as soon as look at me. I saw more of them now – a hulking man with a hooked nose and long hair like filthy straw; a short, bald man who grinned joylessly; a fellow mostly submerged in his bath who had eyes like an alligator and a forehead that had clearly seen the sharp end of more than one knife.

Knives. Yes. You have more pressing worries, Linus. Knives of the very real sort were pointed at me and would arrive sooner than I wanted.

I opened my mouth, made a choking noise, and then waved my free hand.

"Get out. Run," I rasped. "They're coming!"

"That lad's got a sword on him," someone said in the smoke and steam-laden murk. He sounded more indignant than surprised.

I said, "Please. I need to –"

"What are you tossing on about?" the gaunt man hissed. His face screwed up in a mocking sneer. "And what in the name o' the goddesses are you doing running about naked with a fucking sword?" The sneer became a smile of the sort that sent my testicles looking for a way to retreat even farther into my body. "Fellows might get the wrong idea about that sort o' thing, son. Might think you intend to _use _that little weapon o' yours."

"W-what?" I stammered.

The guy with reptilian eyes and a scarred face emerged from the pool to my right and lazily draped his arms over its tiled edge. "What Faro's saying, my dear laddie, is that when a fellow sees another fellow charge in on him with a sword –"

"Even a piece o' piss like that!" rumbled an unseen man.

"– he might jump to certain conclusions. He might just wonder why this fellow's coming at him with a sword. Especially while he's taking a soak with his mates. You follow?" Another grin, like a bag full of broken piano keys.

"I, I –" I stuttered. I gulped. My mind froze and so did my body. A distant, tiny version of the Other Me screamed for me to _move_, to not give a shit about these thugs, to focus on the real problem at hand. As I stood there, locked with indecision and anxious fear, another few men sloshed to the sides of the bathing pools to get a better look at me.

The thin man – Faro was his name, apparently – snarled, "I don't know what kind of madness you carry, lad, but I want you to turn around and leave this place before we start to get angry."

Just as I was about to protest, another voice piped up. "Wait a moment, Faro."

The ugly, skeletal man turned with a grimace and then sat back down in the hot bathwater. He looked slightly disappointed.

A shape like a mobile island moved through the water, parted a bank of smoke and mist, and stopped just before the edge of the bath. I could tell that, despite the fact that two-thirds of him was underwater, this newcomer had a wide, bulky body – much of it covered in tangles of wiry black hair. He had a huge head, like a bowling ball with a receding hairline. Above fat lips the color of cheap cabernet was a thick mustache whose tips were expertly waxed and turned upward. His sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes were the same color of blue as the wall tiles.

"What is your hurry, stranger?" he asked. A strange voice, that one. It rasped and rumbled, growling, but wasn't at all deep. In fact, the big man had a weird kind of whistle behind his words. When he pronounced the word "stranger," it was in a near-falsetto beneath the gravel of someone who had smoked often over a lifetime. Something about that voice was deeply unnerving. It summoned a cool, unpleasant prickle across my bare skin.

When my paralyzed tongue did not produce an immediate answer, the mustachioed man said, "Faro's rude, but he's in the right, stranger. I arranged special-like for this part o' the baths to be open to me and my guildsmen. Now, that sword tells me that you ain't just –"

Behind me, the door slammed open. I whirled around to the delighted hoots and labored breathing of a trio of bokoblins. At their forefront was The Dapper Fellow, his top hat tilted jauntily over the sweat-shining curve of his forehead. He grew the bokoblin equivalent of a smirk and ambled into the murky bath chamber.

Bedlam erupted all around me. Every hardcase in the room seemed to lose his shit simultaneously. The sound of splashing became a fluid cacophony. Warm water sloshed over the lips of the pools and trickled down the center aisle. Every available mouth fired obscenities.

"What in the name o' Alvin?!"

"Bloody fucking hell!"

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"

I was startled to realize, some seconds later, that those last curses were coming from my own mouth. Also, my feet were moving, despite me being unable to remember telling them to do so. I retreated down the walkway between the baths, making sure to avoid burning myself on the first open brazier. Once I was past it, I turned with the Master Sword in both hands, sure to find a horde of bokoblins only feet away.

Instead, I saw The Dapper Fellow only a few steps into the chamber, an undeniably nonplussed expression on his wretched face. He looked around at the roiling water and its riled inhabitants, not sure what to make of it all. At his heels, the two other bokoblins bobbed impatiently while making curious clicking noises deep in their throats.

"What in bleeding hell is this, then?"

Beside me, the big man with the mustache stood up. Water sluiced through his chest hair and over his bulbous keg of a belly. Between his legs swung the most enormous penis I had ever seen.

"YOU!" he roared. He pointed a stubby finger at The Dapper Fellow. "What in Din's name are you fucking savages doing here?!"

The bokoblins seemed genuinely taken aback. The Dapper Fellow leaned on his spear and grimaced. I imagined that I saw indecision flutter through his eyes.

"You there."

I looked up to see the big man's meaty finger now pointing in my direction. God help me, it took more conscious effort than I could muster at that moment not to stare at the massive organ hanging beneath his beltline.

"Behind us, son. No wonder you were charging about with sword in hand!" He waved me up over the wall of the pool.

"Uh," I managed.

"Come _on_, son!" the big man growled. "If the boks are here and you've been fighting them, we drovers have got your back."

I scrambled over the brickwork and slid into the bath. Very warm. It rose to just above my knees, shallower than I had thought. I slid my toes across the submerged tiles and maneuvered around the big man. I suddenly found myself in the midst of the gaggle that had seemed so threatening only a minute before. Truth be told, they hadn't _stopped _being threatening at all. Faro's hateful eyes still watched me, even as I waded out into the center of the pool and took up a defensive position.

Across the room, other bathers were hunkering down just at the edge of their baths. I watched as one man snaked out an arm and grabbed a bag slumped in the aisle. He drew it up quickly, and it disappeared beneath the surface with a quiet _sploosh_.

I took a breath and felt the dank, burning air hit my lungs like a fetid elixir. As I stared down the shaking length of my sword, the entire room seemed to coil and clench. Breaths held in a dozen throats.

Goddammit. Can't anything be simple?

"Listen," I said, "this is my fight. These things came looking for me. I'm the only one armed here, so it's best if you just clear out and let me handle this on my own."

The big man brayed laughter. He shot me a look that was at once piercing and pitying. "That so, son? You really think that?"

I felt myself flush. Not really, no.

"Harman." Skinny, pale Faro splashed past me. "Maybe he's right. This ain't –"

Beyond the door guarded by the bokoblins, rambunctious sounds reverberated against distant tiles.

"I mean, this ain't our fight yet," Faro sighed.

"Bollocks to that!" the big man – Harman – chuckled.

Two more bokoblins chattered their way into the room. They circled the already gathered creatures behind The Dapper Fellow and stood sniffing, bestial smiles plastered on their lips. One of them was the eager, scarred bokoblin from the third floor – he of the dual meat cleavers that even now he clicked together in an atonal rhythm. The Dapper Fellow snarled something at them angrily, obviously not pleased by their sudden appearance. He motioned with his spear. _Just look at this_, he seemed to be saying. _Look at this fine mess._

Another round of swearing and oaths from the assembled men. Somehow, the tension already thick in the air became heavy as rotten stew.

The Dapper Fellow waved back his new recruits, took a few steps forward, and pointed the rusty tip of his spear directly at me. He opened his cracked lips, furrowed his dark brow, and spoke. Sort of.

"Give him," he croaked. You couldn't really call what he had an "accent." That would imply that the bokoblin in the top hat had the _capacity _to speak English. Rather, the gurgling, painful sounds that he emitted were the best approximation he could manage for Hylian speech. It was obviously a chore to sound out even these meager syllables. "Give man. To us. Give him and we no hurt. We no hurt you."

No one spoke. The silence was of the "stunned" variety.

_Slosh_.

_Drip_.

Harman spread a huge, ingratiating smile. He raised his thick arms and swung them about the chamber as if showing off a used car. "Lads – did I hear wrong, or did these bok fuckers just threaten the Great Bay Drover's Guild?"

"Fucking right he did!" came the disjointed chorus.

"How does that make you feel, lads?"

"Like bustin' some skulls, boss." The low reply came from the bruiser with the straw hair, still sitting on the other side of the room as if he were sizing up a bar fight. He flicked a cigarette and it spun into the water with a brief _hiss_.

I did a quick count. There were ten men here, crouched and carefully walking about the baths. No – eleven. Eleven, including me. Five bokoblins. Five _armed _bokoblins. Still, they were rather badly outnumbered. How desperate were they to get through to me? And how long until they received another sudden wave of reinforcements?

Too many variables. Too many distractions. Too many players on the field.

God. I had no idea what I was doing.

Grunts and growls and the hiss of alien breath through jagged teeth. Harman stood staring at The Dapper Fellow as if the bokoblin were a side of beef. The Dapper Fellow's deep sea fish eyes flitted about. What was once indecipherable and monstrous was now plainly obvious: This creature didn't think this was such a good idea. He was considering withdrawing. Though he could probably cut through the naked horde staring him down, he had no desire to play the odds. Even if he still looked like a mutant chimp in a nice hat, I could read all this very clearly in his expression and movements.

For a moment, I thought this might end better than I had hoped.

Too bad the jackass with the cleavers forced the issue.

With a grating battle cry, the scarred bokoblin rushed around his leader and made a beeline for the bath where I stood. I had time to match blinks in cadence with The Dapper Fellow – blinks of astonishment – and then the entire bath chamber descended into chaos.

"Rip their heads off, lads!" Harman howled.

Everything exploded. A chant rose everywhere, without a real source, resonating against the walls.

"OY OY OY OY OY OY!"

I stepped back in surprise and felt my right foot completely fail to get purchase on bath floor. Just as I was keeling over backwards, I caught sight of at least four drovers as they brought dripping knives up from beneath the water and leapt like orangutans over the bath walls.

You are a smooth motherfucker, Linus Olsen.

My head passed through the churning surface. I rose up, spumes in my eyes and my limbs squirming. A small wave slapped against my nose. Water rushed up my nostrils, and when I came up again everything smelled of silt and sulfur. I regained my footing just in time to watch Harman grasp the scarred bokoblin by the shoulders and hurl him out into the middle of the bath. One of the cleavers went spinning through the air and vanished beneath the steaming waves.

I pivoted about, blowing water from my nose and ineffectively trying to bat wet hair from my eyes. A fine bloody madness gripped the baths. The bokoblins had fanned out and were trying to fight the drovers man-to-man. One of the bokoblins was already dead, laying face down in the aisle between the baths with a shimmering pool of red radiating from the ruin of its throat. Beside it, one of the other men gripped his belly and made pitiful squealing noises as dark blood jetted between his fingers.

The Dapper Fellow stood up to his waist in the pool across the room. He swung his spear wildly. Strings of white hair tumbled from beneath his hat and billowed as he fought. He gibbered alien curses as he trudged across his wet battlefield.

One of the other bokoblins – a reedy monster in a gray leather vest and leggings – lunged into the pool I stood in. He swung a rusty dirk about as if he was in a fencing match.

I watched as Faro scooped the dropped meat cleaver into his hand as if he had summoned it with magic. It was awful to watch him move – all sinew just barely contained by his papery skin, looking for all the world like it would split like a sausage casing and spill something truly repellant out into the water. Faro waded up to the bokoblin and planted the cleaver six inches into its shoulder. It made a horrible, surprised sound ("GWOK!"), tried to raise its weapon, and didn't even have time to blink as Faro wrenched the cleaver free and then buried it in the creature's windpipe. Its body slid down the low wall and then bobbed there, like the world's worst pool toy. Spiral arms of blood uncurled through the bathwater.

Something splashed loudly behind me.

In the pool across the room, the bald, grinning man I had seen earlier deftly cut the throat of another bokoblin. As blood gushed up out of its mouth, it charged gurgling and drove two feet of short sword through the drover's midsection. The sound was indescribable – a drilling, sawing, meaty noise. I felt something in me more or less shut down as the two figures fell and floated motionlessly.

The sound of parting water quickened behind me. I felt someone come up just behind my shoulder. Beyond the smells of soap and smoke and death, I smelled rotten breath as it blew upon the skin of my back.

"Watch out, lad!"

I tried to jump forward and turn in the same movement, but it didn't quite work out the way I wanted it to. It turned into a crazed, uncontrollable spin. I saw the bokoblin with scars on his cheeks curve into view. His makeshift clothes were soaked. His dead white hair lay plastered against his misshapen skull. All the hate in the world seemed to squat in his eyes, and the remaining cleaver sat in his hand like a dark promise.

I stumbled, threw all my weight to the right, and swung my blade in a horizontal arc. I felt the sword collide with the meat cleaver, crashing off it and leaving yet another groove in its already pitted blade. The bokoblin snorted, keened, and came at me with his weapon sweeping out before him. The water pulled at my calves and weighed down my feet. I yanked the sword back just in time to feel rough steel meet it like a car crash. I blocked another slash of the cleaver, tried to kick out with no success whatsoever, and prepared myself as the bokoblin cackled and stepped in for the killing blow.

Harman's massive, hairy body passed by before I even knew he was near me. He moved through the water like a cape buffalo. The bokoblin, already lined up for its swing against me, didn't have time to adjust his attack. He squawked, flailed the meat cleaver to no effect, and could only watch as Harman grabbed and then pitched him to the side. The big man was in motion before the bokoblin even landed. Harman grasped the monster by the scruff of its neck and dragged it mewling over the surface of the bathwater. He carried it to the stone lip of the pool and grasped the back of its skull with strong blunt fingers. The bokoblin shrieked in terror as Harman forced its head up out of the water.

Harman slammed its forehead down on the lip of the bath with a _crack _like an egg hitting concrete. It bawled wetly, then fell silent. Harman brought the bokoblin's skull to the tiles again. And again. And again.

When there was nothing left of the bokoblin's face but purple-pink pulp, he tossed the body out onto the floor. Groans and cries of pain filled the chamber. From my vantage point, I could see at least five bodies spread throughout the baths and on the floor between. Every one of the bokoblins was dead.

Wait . . . no. Not necessarily. I saw no sign of The Dapper Fellow. I wondered if he had somehow slipped out during the worst of the fighting.

Most of the water had turned to a pinkish froth. Bits of flesh and crushed bone swam through it, already settling to the tiles as a rain of morbid sediment. I looked down and saw a gray chunk of what could only be brain float up and brush past my thigh. Later, I was quite glad that all rational conscious thought had shut down earlier in the brawl. I waded to the edge of the pool and stepped out.

The Great Bay Drover's Guild was already hard at work on cleanup. Down the aisle, Faro and the huge brawler were helping to fish bodies out of the opposite baths. A fat man with bulging eyes, jaundiced skin, and his intestines protruding through a tear in his beer gut rolled onto the tiles. Water mixed with standing blood and washed the floor a swirling crimson.

My jaw clenched so tightly my teeth began to ache. I wondered if I was going to break down the same way I had after fighting Karrik's men in the meadow.

In the middle of it all, Harman stood between the braziers with his hands on his hips. He surveyed the carnage and barked sporadic orders to his men. He looked pleased with his work. I made my way to him and wheezed, "Hey."

He turned my way and gave me a cool, appraising once-over. When he gazed at my sword, he blinked and shook his head. "Oy," he finally said. "This is a right fucking mess you brought with you."

"Yeah," I said. "Sorry."

"What'd you do to bring the boks down on you, lad? This ain't their usual way o' doing things."

"I, um." It was hard to know what to say. I knew I was in mild shock, and I knew that I needed to get moving again as soon as possible. "I kind of pissed off the southern raiders yesterday. I, uh, stopped them from robbing a family. Ranchers. The, uh, Lons."

Raised eyebrows. "O' the Lon Ranch?"

"Yeah."

"Aye, I know 'em." He smiled wanly. "You must have done some mighty terrible things to deserve this, lad. You'd best stick with us until this thing rights itself."

I shook my head weakly. "That's the thing. There's a lot more of those fuckers crawling around this place, and they're led by a couple of moblins. Moblins riding wolfos."

This seemed to give him pause. Slowly, he asked, "What about the city guard? Is this a fucking invasion?"

Good question. "Don't know. They said that they have a shitload of people here, so I guess you could call it that. The thing is, well, they're after _me_. And you guys are fucking awesome for helping me, but if you try to take on any more of these guys than the few you just did, you're gonna get murdered. I just need to get out. I was told there's a way out through here . . ."

Harman gestured toward the gloom-shrouded end of the chamber. "It ain't obvious, but there's a service door back there. I ain't been back there, but I imagine there's an exit in there somewhere." He paused. "It sounds like we still got some fighting to do."

"I guess."

"And you're sure you don't want any o' us to come with you?"

My gaze landed on the yellowish, bloated eyes of the disemboweled fat man. "Yeah," I mumbled. "Real sure."

Out in the vast belly of the bathhouse, a long, muted howl drifted through the walls. A moment later, one rose and warbled in reply. It sounded closer, even though it was muffled by layers of stone and plaster.

"That's it," I sighed. "Gotta go."

"Wait, lad."

I looked at the big man skeptically. He extended a powerful hand and clenched my forearm below the elbow. I dopily did likewise. "Good luck, lad," he said. Intense eyes held my own. "You'll be needing it." He released his grip. "Before you go: What's your name?"

I told him.

"Wish we could have met under better circumstances, Linus. The name's Harman Teal. I'm the taskmaster o' this rowdy bunch." He frowned. "Looks like we'll be short a few, this trip. Sad business. Never thought we'd see the war come this far south again."

"I'm sorry."

He shrugged. "Don't worry on it. My lads and I, well," the smile he gave me was a bit laconic and a bit playful. "We don't always work on the side o' the law. We may be drovers, aye, but there's a sight more that we do too. These're tough men. They've seen their guildsmen die before."

I nodded. The air reeked of blood now. It and the ghosts of wet smoke were making my stomach clench and quiver. "I need to go," I said.

Harman nodded, and I turned down the aisle between the opposing baths. At the end of it was an alcove that, on closer inspect, contained a small door painted to look like the rest of the wall. I felt my stiff, numb limbs work back to life as I moved toward it. It felt like the end of some gut-churning dream when I grasped the door's handle.

"Oy!"

I looked back. Harman Teal stood in the middle of the room with a grin like a conqueror. "If ya're ever in Great Bay, look us up! I may be Harman out here, but at home everyone just calls me Tingle!"

This time, I managed not to laugh. "Tingle," I repeated.

He laughed for me, then. "Oh, aye! 'Cuz that's what ol' Harman does to the ladies!" He thrust his hips and his ridiculous endowment flopped about like a pink elephant's trunk. "Me n' the lads'll show you a night on the town, hero!"

I squeaked something incomprehensible, gave a half-hearted wave, and proceeded out the back of the bath chamber. It would probably be a bit before I managed to banish that particular image from my mind.

I found myself in a narrow, dimly-lit hallway. The walls were rough adobe. The ceiling was lined with chugging copper pipes of many sizes. Foolishly, I checked behind me to make sure I hadn't suddenly shifted into yet another world. These sudden transitions were not helping my paranoia.

Following this corridor, I soon wandered into a dark, open room festooned with yet more pipes and shuddering tubes. A couple of lanterns like afterthoughts provided inadequate light. Glass-encased gauges twitched about the walls. Another door in the far wall. I couldn't remember for the life of me what Smythe said about this one. Whatever.

Just as I was putting fingers to door handle, I realized that I probably should have asked the drovers for some clothes.

I felt my gluteal muscles twitch.

Too late now.

I pulled open the door. A burst of coolish air whipped about my legs and bristled the hairs on my scrotum. It took several moments for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. At last, a round stairwell with brown adobe walls resolved itself. A spiral staircase, its steps and structure made of cold dark metal, corkscrewed up and down into the void. Tiny lanterns led the way with timid, unimpressive outposts of flickering orange light.

Another stairway. Another blind descent.

Wonderful.


	14. 14

**14**

I followed the new stairs all the way to their bottom. Down and down they went, until the adobe walls of the shaft transformed into piled rock. I passed two more doors and didn't as much as pause to inspect them. Every clanging step seemed to summon another degree of heat about me. When at last the stairs came to an end, the air sweltered like the inside of a boarded-up sauna.

The floor here was lined with the same quarried stone as the walls. When I looked up, it appeared as if I had just descended a well.

Directly before me was yet another door – this one made from heavy, riveted steel. On its center was sign painted yellow, its blocky Hylian characters as foreboding as they were illegible. Beneath the letters was a symbol that I suspected was much more universal: A single curling flame, painted in banded layers of orange, red, and blue.

I glanced back up the stairwell and wondered whether it might be wiser to climb to the fourth floor and wait this out there. Perhaps I could go to ground with the noble guests that supposedly bathed in luxury among golden tubs and rare oils. Debauchery too, if Ingo's gossip-mongering was to be trusted.

A rueful smile parted my lips. Yeah, no. I had no desire to get caught on those tight, inescapable stairs by the sudden appearance of Elkin, Karrik, or any of their goons.

Through the mystery door it was, then. Off to wherever it was Mohan Smythe had wanted me to go. I curled my toes against the warm rock and licked dry lips.

God_damn_ it was hot.

The steel door was as heavy as it looked, if not heavier, and I had to set the Master Sword down to pull it open with both hands. The metal was unnervingly cool against my fingers. Another corridor revealed itself, the walls and ceiling festooned with pipes.

I hesitated, listening to the thrum and clank of the stairwell. No sounds from above but the chug of buried pipes and the breezy movement of humid air. One heartbeat, and then two. I lifted the sword from the floor, proceeded into the conduit-lined hallway, and shut the door behind me.

Stone tiles pulsed warmth into the soles of my feet as I moved down the corridor. The entryway led onto a gently sloping ramp that carried me even deeper under the bathhouse.

I soon found myself at a crossroads, where the ramp ended and this corridor cut across another one. At the corner of each hall sat immense wooden water tanks, their sides sweating condensation and gauges jiggling at their bases. I could hear the humming movement of water as it rushed through the cobweb of pipes that connected each floor-to-ceiling cask. Over the junction hung a single lantern encased in red glass. It cast an anemic circle of sooty radiance over the halls. Beneath it, water dripping along high pipe fittings had the look of cooling blood.

The floor felt uneven here. When I looked down, I found myself standing on bare, unaltered bedrock. Its striated hills and folds were worn shiny with the passing of a thousand unsure feet.

This, then, must be the basement casually mentioned by Tash. Some vast undercroft that supplied the hot water for the baths. Pumps and piping set down where the bathhouse keepers could get at Oloro's volcanic hot springs. Dad would have a field day with this place, I thought idly.

Had Smythe mentioned this place? I scrunched up my forehead and felt sweat drizzle over its sudden contours. The well-to-do farmer's twitching words seemed a dozen years and hundreds of miles away. Another lifetime entirely – difficult to recall or even comprehend.

I decided that he had indeed meant for me to descend to this dark, sweltering level of the bathhouse. Whatever "tunnel" Smythe had babbled about must lie somewhere in this maze of conduits and maintenance corridors. I might even find help here – after all, there had to be some sort of staff to keep all this strange machinery running.

Good. _Good_.

I looked left, then right. Down each direction stood row after row and tumble after jumble of unfamiliar and even alien equipment. Escher nightmares of pipes. Chugging, churning tanks and cisterns. Gauges marked in circling mandalas of Hylian. At intervals, other red lanterns perched in the rafters emitted baleful spheres of hellglow. In all directions, nothing moved but drifting patches of rogue steam.

Got to keep moving, Linus. Got to get out any way you can.

I chose the corridor I had been following and continued down it. My feet slid gingerly over wet stone and patches of water-packed sand.

Down here, the smell of sulfur was a live thing. It twisted about corners and glowered in the alcoves, rising up to swat at my nose as I passed. Below that were weird swimming pool odors, carried on puffs of steam and exuded by mysterious metal jars set next to each massive water tank. Scents rich in minerals and heavy metal rose from pools scattered about the cavern floor. Wet concrete. Sandstone after a long rainstorm.

God. I have no idea where I'm going. I scuttle-stepped down the corridor like I was a teenager again, trying to sneak out of the house to smoke pot on a Thursday night. Other signs almost identical to the one bolted on the basement entrance passed in the corners of my eyes. Notices – warnings, instructions, or graffiti for all I knew – were painted on select pipes and nameless devices. I stopped bothering with any of them after the second such set of whitewash letters yielded only this deep revelation: I'm confused, exhausted, and I have no idea what this fucking means. Also, my scrotum keeps sticking sweatily to my right thigh.

I wandered past another junction, and then another. Signs were posted at each. Fucking Hylian. I continued on my straightforward route. Twice the Master Sword threatened to tumble from my slick fingers. I saw no one. Here and there sat evidence of workers – a forgotten tool sitting in a corner; a rag left gray and greasy over a bulbous iron flask. Still, no one moved through the corridor but me.

So hot I could hardly fucking think.

Ahead: Red, smoky light bled unevenly into poisonous yellow. Another color of lamp. A kind of announcement? I stole a paranoid glance over my shoulder. I cocked an ear, listening for pursuing grunts or heavy footsteps. Nothing – at least, nothing to indicate pursuit. It was difficult to distinguish individual noises in the slow cacophony of the undercroft. I proceeded toward the yellow light.

My body parted a bank of mist that stank of hot metal and match heads, and then I found myself in a round, claustrophobic chamber. Manic webs of thin piping covered the ceiling. Occasional pipettes descended from this gray-brown mass, falling like metal vines to dozens of casks set in the walls. Everything thrummed and whooshed and chugged with unseen liquid movement. A steady vibration pulsed through the room like a clockwork heartbeat. The saturated air swirled and shimmered at my approach.

I stopped, half-panting, and looked around. Three other hallways branched off from this room, seemingly at random angles. Fucking hell. How could anyone find their way around this place without a map?

Maybe they don't. Ever think of that, genius?

I swiped at grimy clump of hair that had fallen over my eye. Goddammit.

_Drip-a-drip-drip_.

Hot water slid off the seams of the overhead pipes and onto my shoulders. It was clear as glass, but smelled like blood. I realized, to my growing discomfort, that the raw stone floor was getting _rather _hot. Not quite as hot as Los Angeles asphalt in July, but it was getting there. As I stood in anxious indecision, I began to lift one foot, then the other, as if preparing for some stiff and laconic jig.

Something metallic clanked, then clattered. The sound echoed indistinctly from behind me, radiating out from some unseen corridor.

My breath hitched. Everything stopped. My grip on the Master Sword constricted until pins and needles shot through my fingers. Through the slow din of ten-thousand pipes and pumps, I tried to listen. I swallowed.

From the direction I had come from: A muffled, almost indiscernible titter. A sound that might have been the staccato hiss of a broken pipe, had it not been for the weird, recognizable croak that lay beneath it. Something that issued from between twisted purple lips and broken teeth.

They were here. Somewhere out in the writhing guts of the bathhouse. I grimaced in frustration. How could they have gotten down here so fast? Shouldn't Harman Teal's men at least be keeping them out for the time being? It struck me then that they – whoever "they" were – had probably been down in the basements since the initial invasion. Sentries sent downstairs to make sure no one would escape through the maintenance corridors.

I groaned softly, made a mental dice roll, and scampered into the hallway branching off to the left. I could only hope that it led somewhere. Behind me, any sounds of pursuit were swallowed up in the constantly clanking, rushing, hissing cacophony of this tropical labyrinth.

Brass, wood, iron, and copper: All flew past in a blurred storm of shapes and colors. I paused only briefly at the next two junctions I took. Though I tried to orient myself away from the sounds of pursuit, I instantly knew that it was fruitless to try to take a circuitous route here. As undeniably disoriented as I was by the seemingly arbitrary network of corridors, any attempt to go off a straight path could very well end with me running smack-dab into the creatures I was trying to escape.

I ducked under a low arch and came into a gloom-soaked hallway. The walls were rough-cut stone, and at regular intervals circular alcoves were carved into them. In each alcove, a vertical water main as big around as a truck tire ran from floor to ceiling. Every one of the huge pipes radiated heat like an open oven. Even in the near-dark of the corridor, the air swam chaotically with mirages.

A turn ahead, zigging nonsensically to the left. Sweat poured from my body in torrents as I loped down the hall. I smelled smoke. Tobacco. Like a cigarette, but somehow damper and fouler.

I turned the corner. Please let this be the way out. Please let me get out of this without having to come face to face with any of those godforsaken bokoblins.

So, of course, I ran right into one of them.

The bastard stood no more than ten feet away from the corner, idling in an intersection and looking bored. He held something that looked like a cross between a stogie and a dog turd in one hand, smoke climbing from its tip and pooling in the rafters above. His big, pale eyes turned my way and filled with something that looked like disbelief.

My feet clipped and jumbled against the floor in my attempt to stop. The tip of the Master Sword ricocheted off the stone floor with an ear-piercing _clang_ as my arms tilted and my torso contorted. "Shit!" I hissed.

A short, blunt sword sat propped against the wall next to the startled bokoblin. Egg-colored lamplight pooled on its pitted surface. The hoary little creature exhaled a jet of smoke through its nostrils. We stared at one another in stunned, sweating silence. Then he went for the sword.

In hindsight, neither of us was thinking his best that evening. The bokoblin never let go of his cigar and his free hand scrabbled about the hilt of his sword like a palsied old man's. In turn, I didn't take the opportunity to simply run the fucker through. Instead, I set off toward him at a numbed sprint, all but completely forgetting that I held a weapon. The distance between us closed in an instant. My shoulder collided with his forehead and bone-jangling pain shot down my arm. The same shoulder I had bashed against the bathhouse floor, so many moons ago. Both the bokoblin and I grunted, spinning away from one another, slapping back-first into the rocky walls. We now stood on opposite sides of the narrow corridor, panting.

The bokoblin still held his cigar. He blinked, took one last quick drag from it, and flicked it to the floor. It lay smoldering between us.

A throaty chuckle; a sick little grin. I now saw the jagged, purposeful scars on the bokoblin's forearms, cheekbones, and chin. More ritual marks. Such a charming people. He pursed his lips and blew a rancid mouthful of smoke toward my face.

He lunged.

I pushed away from the wall with my elbows and attempted to raise my sword. An awkward, inefficient movement. The bastard was there, _right there_, his sword's tip rising toward my belly. I tried and failed to correct my momentum, stepped right, and smelled ground-in dirt and rank sweat as the creature jabbed into the spot I had just occupied. My hands fumble-slapped together in some vague attempt to change the grip on my sword. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the bokoblin's free hand swing out in a wild arc.

Then I was on the ground, though I couldn't remember falling. My jaw and back ached. Raw heat throbbed from the floor, into my spine and shoulder blades. The world swam with roaring static.

Despite standing about five feet tall, the bokoblin loomed over me like a colossus. He smiled, smacked his lips, and turned his sword down for one final plunge.

My fingers and forearms spasmed against the floor as I reflexively scrambled backward. At the same time, my foot shot up and out, landing squarely in the crotch of the bokoblin's leather britches. His grin vanished. He stumbled back, yelped something that sounded like, "Farp!" and clutched at the air in front of his groin. The bokoblin emitted the apparently universal male groan that accompanies bruised testicles.

No time to gawp, Linus. Get the fuck up!

I secured the Master Sword in my right hand, scooted my buttocks awkwardly across the stone floor, and attempted to rise. A shaky ascent at best. My skull and mandible reverberated dully. I stumbled, corrected, and fought against the leaden weight of my own body. My vision still pitched and flowed, black streamers eating at the corners of the world.

Whatever damage I had done to the bokoblin's soft bits must have only stunned him – suddenly, he was back in my face. A low mewl whistled between his grimacing lips. My legs backpedaled furiously. Blind retreat. The little bastard stabbed his sword in a killing thrust; I swiped the Master Sword as if I were returning a tennis serve. The clash of steel echoed down the corridor with painful force.

We shoved apart, charged, and swung our swords again. It was clear that he had more skill and experience with his weapon – almost infinitely more. Our swords met again. Steel cried out like the music of some idiot Limbo. Through the fog of adrenaline, fightlust, and that godforsaken snuffling heat, I realized that only my height and reach were keeping me alive. This tiny warrior simply wasn't used to dueling anyone my size.

He would learn, though. Quickly. I slashed at him a third time, all manic strength and no precision whatsoever. The bokoblin dodged back across the corridor, his pained sneer pulling up into a wretched approximation of a smile. Something anticipatory and knowing danced in his big eyes, now.

Yes – learning. Adapting. I couldn't keep this up.

The bokoblin took a big breath and crouched. Flows of sweat ran through the lined channels of his simian face. I took a step toward him, hesitated, and chanced a look down the corridor – to the direction I had been heading before barreling into this asshole. Heat-distorted patches of light continued off into a blur of darkness. As far as I could see, the hallways were all blessedly empty.

Go! I thought. Just go! My mind screamed the word until the single syllable lost its meaning.

Too late: The bokoblin shuffled toward me one last time. He came at me in a quick, careful, determined crabwalk. He held his stubby sword parallel to his body, tilted at an angle that suggested its destination was either my leg or groin. Payback for that kick to the genitals, perhaps. I briefly mulled the possibility of being castrated by a midget. The scenario was not at all appealing.

My left hand flew out as the bokoblin completed his approach. Pale hair, lank and greasy as bad pasta, squeezed between my fingers. He thrust his cracked little sword. I looped my fingers deep into his wet, stinking hair and _pulled_. Pain ignited along my right side, spreading in a thin ribbon of fire just below my lowest rib. I gasped and wrenched the bokoblin straight down into my rising knee. His face impacted my kneecap and ricocheted like a dog bouncing off a bumper. I felt the briefest slash of teeth and something hot and sticky splatter across my leg. The bokoblin let his sword clatter to the floor and then crumpled there himself. Drips and sprays of red painted the stone surface like Pollock afterthoughts.

I sucked a shuddering breath. The searing line on my torso lit up like it had been doused in acid. I swiped a finger across it, hissed with pain, and wasn't at all surprised to see the finger come away very wet and very red. Quite a nick.

On the floor, the bokoblin coughed and spluttered, face down on the hot stone. Blood spread from his hidden face in streams that looked black in the lamplight. Three yellowish teeth sat in the effluvium like spines of reef rising from a wine-dark sea.

No time to do a damage assessment. Need to make good on that nonsense syllable. Go!

Without a backwards glance, I took off down the corridor at an experimental trot. The wound the sword-wielding bokoblin had given me hurt like a bastard, but the pain was more than endurable. Compared to the furrow gouged in my cheek by that moblin spear, this was a fucking paper cut. At least . . . I thought so. I would have to take a look at it when I had the time to stop and reassess the situation. Maybe get a tetanus shot too, the way that sword had looked.

I hadn't even made it to the next intersecting corridor when I heard the bokoblin scream something that reverberated up and down the hallway like a generational curse. A warning to other sentries posted in the basement? The bokoblin equivalent of, "Fuck you!" perhaps? At that moment, I had no desire whatsoever to find out. I doubled my pace and felt a molten needle slash back and forth across my chest. Bruised jaw, lacerated torso, bashed shoulder, scrabbling itchy stitches. Blood seeped in a gooey cascade across my hip and belly.

Blind turn. Another bokoblin cry – diminishing now, but directionless. A different creature? The same? Christ, if only I knew where the hell I was –

I passed through a dark, open space. Ghosts of pipes on all sides. My feet tottered over and then bumbled down a short flight of stairs. Ahead, darkness flickered with pus-colored lamplight. Yellow flashes illuminated a T-junction shrouded in billows of gray, snakelike vapor. I barreled into the intersection. A pipe or valve cleared its throat and a suffocating gout of steam clawed at my face like a hungry ghost. I coughed and waved a reflexive hand in front of my face.

To my right: a shuffling step. Out of the swirling, metal-stinking mist erupted a figure in silhouette. Tall, bone-angled, and dressed in whispering robes. In its hands was the long wooden handle and dull, half-hidden glint of a weapon or implement.

Death, I thought. For more than a moment, I really was convinced that an utterly non-metaphorical Grim Reaper had come to claim me. An idea bloomed in my mind: The bokoblin had not just grazed me with his sword, but had actually cut through something slow and fatal. Then I made out the figure's gray-flecked mustache, ropey arms, and the dark, emotionless flint of its eyes.

My guts lurched. My head reeled.

It was Ingo.

The instrument he held at the ready was actually a red-bladed fire axe. He proceeded toward me at a grim, implacable pace. Without a word, he hefted the axe and raised it over his shoulder. I stood frozen and stared, dumbstruck, as he came.

So it was to be a Death of a more literal sort – the kind embodied by Brutus, Benedict Arnold, and Judas Iscariot. Murder in the wet and dark.

I tried to raise the Master Sword, but the damn thing seemed to suddenly be made of lead, with a concrete core. I (thought I) heaved; I (thought I) strained. The blade rose no more than an inch from my side. Where had that split-second reaction time to Karrik's wolfos gone? How had that strange, beautiful ability to spin and dodge departed me?

The answer was painfully simple: It had been luck. Pure, blind, unprecedented luck – and that luck had just run out.

And still Ingo closed the distance, his weapon raised and ready.

Every second since we had met had been leading up to this moment. Ingo had seen that I knew him – seen with those unreadable, all-too-knowing eyes. Seen that I knew his doppelganger and knew what he stood for. Seen that I knew who he was and what he was capable of. Seen what he planned to do and who he planned to do it to. Somewhere along the way, he had made the decision to do something about it – to do something about _me. _All he had to do was wait. Lo and behold, he hadn't had to wait long. The perfect opportunity, only a day after the interloper had come into his life.

He had stood there, in the near-darkness, waiting. Just standing and waiting – waiting for _me_ – wait for this _very moment_ – and now –

Ingo marched no more than a pace away from me. His eyes widened. The axe descended. My eyelids squeezed shut. I'm sorry, I thought. I'm not sure who I directed the apology at. No one. Everyone.

The air about my left shoulder stirred with a _whoof_.

CHOK.

It was a hideous, final, spine-stirring sound. The noise of an axe cleaving bone and pulping brain.

The pain of the impact did not come. In fact, I felt no impact whatsoever. Curious. Must have hit the pain center in my brain, I thought. Can't feel a thing! That's kind of nice.

Wait.

That's stupid.

I frowned in consternation.

I opened my eyes, still somewhat expecting to see the perpendicular length of the axe handle as it ran before my eyes and lead up to the axe blade nestled in my head. No such sight greeted me. To my left, Ingo stood taut and saucer-eyed, his hands stretched out before him. From those hands extended the axe handle. I turned my head, tracing its length as it crossed over my shoulder. I had to turn my body to see where the axe's head had landed.

Standing no more than two feet behind me, muscles twitching and plum-colored skin shimmering with sweat, was a tall bokoblin. In one hand it gripped a curved dagger. In its forehead, it gripped the head of Ingo's axe. The red blade sank inches into the creature's cranium. Blood welled up along its edges and poured into its victim's parted eyes. The bandana covering the lower half of the bokoblin's face was soaked an ugly maroon. Loud dribbles and streamers of blood fell to the floor.

The bokoblin emitted a rank little sigh – a sound that was at once indignant and resigned – and slumped to the floor. It took the axe with it, pulling Ingo forward a few awkward, loping steps. The dagger clattered to the floor like a discarded piece of flatware.

I realized that the last breath I had taken had been the gasp that had accompanied Ingo's appearance. That breath had begun to swirl angry and painful about my lungs. I let it out in a single, sharp exhalation. A double-copper stink filled my nostrils, overlaid with smells of rain, lemon soap, and brimstone.

Ingo let go of the axe. It still stood in the air at an angle – a jaunty italic exclamation mark. The gaunt man turned and looked me over, his eyes narrowing to hooded slits. His hair stood up in profusion of damp, unkempt clumps. Individual gray and black strands of it corkscrewed away from his head and fluttered tenebrously as he moved. Ingo cleared his throat, spat, and pointed a boney index finger at my face.

"Gods damn you, outerlander!" he roared. "Were your parents cousins or did you just decide to get this stupid?"

"Jesus!" I sputtered. "Jesus Christ!"

"What?" Ingo shook his head irritably. "Ingo don't know what that means. Ingo doesn't give two puckers of Nayru's asshole what it means. Probably some heathen gibberish from whatever backwards, horse-fuckin' country ya' come from." The index finger rose again and stabbed toward my nose. "What he _does _care about is that ya' keep bringing this kind of nonsense down on him an' his."

My eyes slid past Ingo to the dead bokoblin. It still stared up at the ceiling, almost contemplative in repose. Only the blood pooled over the edges of its eyes and the blank mistiness of their surfaces indicated the bokoblin was in fact deceased. That and the axe protruding from its head, of course. For the first time since I had taken up a sword, I felt something in me go sour and nauseous. My stomach rippled and I forced myself to look back at Ingo.

"What?" I managed.

Ingo glowered a moment, then cupped his face in his hands. "Mother goddesses, give Ingo strength," he muttered. He sighed and said, "Lons had their share o' trouble before you came, outerlander. Storms, stampedes, a rustler or two. Seasonal hands that went bad. But," the accusatory digit appeared once more, "it weren't nothin' they couldn't handle. Now you come outta' nowhere, with your weird speech an' weirder sword. An' Ingo thinks to himself, 'Oy, this lad's trouble. Sure, he helped Ingo fight off them snouts' –"

"Hey –"

"But Ingo knew you was goin' to be a bringer o' bad things. Now look at the lot of us." He let out a breath. "You're trouble o' a different sort, ain't you kid?"

I opened my mouth, searched desperately for some witty rejoinder, and came up very short. What emerged felt meager indeed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it." When even that felt too lame, I finished, "I didn't mean to cause all this trouble."

Ingo looked me over again, pausing to examine my sword and the wound in my side, and nodded slowly. "Aye, Ingo believes it. Perhaps. He still don't trust you, though. But if you're bringin' the fight to the boks an' the snouts, he ain't got no choice but to help you." Ingo moved past me and stood over the dead bokoblin, as if admiring his handiwork.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Though I still wasn't sure exactly where I stood with this man, for the moment it seemed like he had no desire to cleave my face in two. For now.

"Why are you here?" I asked. "Last time I saw you, we were both on the third floor."

"Ingo heard you'd come down here." He readjusted his grip on the axe handle and wrenched it free of the bokoblin's skull. A tiny shower of blood, bone, and pink bits sprinkled the floor. "Even he didn't think you'd be dumb enough to get snuck up on by a bok. Din have mercy."

"And you just happened to be here to save me?" I said, more than a little incredulous.

"Naw. _You _just happened to get between Ingo an' his target. He'd been stalkin' this one for more than a few minutes when you came hootin' and slidin' in here. Bok saw his chance – thought he'd get the slip on ya' and plant that there chopper 'tween your shoulders. So Ingo got the drop on him first." He examined the dripping axe head and raised a scraggly eyebrow.

"Thanks," I said.

"Don't mention it." Ingo barked one of his humorless little laughs. "What were _you _doin' down this low, lad?"

I raised a hand to rub away some of the sweat that continually collected along my hairline. The gesture made the injury on my side spit and yowl. I felt fresh dribbles of blood flow down my abdomen. "I tried to take them head-on," I hissed. "Up on the third floor. There were too many of them. One of the moblins that attacked you is with them. Him and his brother."

"Aye – the Bulbin boys. Rotten snout bastards. Been hauntin' the south provinces for a couple years, now."

"Yeah. Karrik and Elkan. They brought wolfos."

Ingo grunted. "Ingo heard their calls. He didn't think he'd heard right. Hope you got a spear or pole arm then, lad. Ingo's seen bigger an' better men than you get snapped apart by wolfos riders."

Thank you for the encouragement, I thought. Asshole.

I said, "So I r – so, I, I tried to break them apart. Take them out one at a time, right?" I had almost said, _So I ran_. "While I was doing that, I ran into that Smythe guy. The farmer? He said that there was some kind of a back way out of the bathhouse through the basement. So I hightailed it down here." I left out the incident with the Great Bay Drovers' Guild, largely because I myself could barely believe that it had happened. The memory still had a hazy, surreal quality to it that suggested that I had actually dreamt it or seen it in a movie once.

Ingo set the axe's head on the floor and leaned disinterestedly against the handle. He looked like a man waiting to play through during a particularly long game of golf, not someone who had just snuffed out a life. "Aye, Ingo's heard about that. Some tunnel that the gorons use to get all the bathhouse supplies in, easy-like."

"Do you know where it is?" I asked hopefully.

"Nope. Never been down here." Ingo sniffed. "Pretty nice, though. Ingo'll have to come back down here again sometime."

I tamped down the urge to shout obscenities. "Any idea where it _might _be?"

"Well, Ingo came from back yonder." He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, toward the right passage that had branched off the T-junction. "Go that way and it's a pretty straight shot back up into the bathhouse's main floor. Sure you don't want to just go back up an' out the main way?"

The idea was enticing. Familiarity was certainly precious to me at that moment, and the thought of escaping through even vaguely known territory was damned tempting. However, what if Elkan and Karrik hadn't been bluffing when they said they had the bathhouse barricaded and secured? Ingo might have gotten down here, but he hadn't mentioned trying to escape.

"Do you know if the raiders have guards on the doors?"

Ingo shrugged.

Shit.

"All right then," I exhaled. "Might as well try my luck with the low road." I looked back over my shoulder, into the steam-shrouded corridor that ran away from us. The left route. "Have any desire to come with me?" I asked, mostly sarcastic.

"Not for a thousand rupees and a roll in the hay with Lady Lanayru 'erself. Ingo thinks you're buggerin' insane to try an' go even deeper into this pit. Not with the blood-scent these rotters have got for ya'. An', puttin' it kindly, Ingo don't want you weighin' him down."

Bastard, I thought. You rotten fucking bastard.

. . . Still. I needed to give credit where credit was due.

I swallowed, looked straight into Ingo's unsettling eyes, and said, "Thank you again, Ingo. You saved my life." Trying not to tremble – trying not to remember the capering polygon version of this man – I extended my hand.

For the third time, Ingo examined me with an almost clinical gaze. I should have felt some species of embarrassment at my filthy, sweat-and-blood-soaked nakedness. Instead, I experienced a near-mortal chill – one that briefly overwhelmed the wet, pulsating heat of the undercroft. Suddenly, something passed through Ingo's eyes. A half-blink; a glimmer. Something quick as a flash of lightning and completely inscrutable.

Ingo switched the axe into his off hand and raised his hand to my elbow. His grip was hard, bony, and seemingly without any inner warmth. "Aye," he said absently. "Aye. Were Ingo's first instinct. Don't go makin' him regret it now. For some Din-forsaken reason, ol' Tash's taken a shine to you. Malora too. Don't go dyin' on 'em, outerlander."

"I'll try not to."

The look Ingo favored me with then was so blank and emotionless, it may as well have been plastered on the corpse laying beside us. He disengaged the shake, rolled his neck to pop the joints, took hold of his axe, and turned to walk the opposite direction.

As Ingo passed below the swaying, dingy lamp that lit this section of corridor, I called after him, "What about you? Where are you going?"

Ingo pivoted and flashed me a devilish smile – literally, as his gold tooth caught the mustard-yellow light and winked almost playfully. "Ingo's off to kill him some o' these 'Southern Raiders.' Maybe even bag one o' those mob pieces o' shit. Get him the bounty on their heads, perhaps." He casually tapped the axe against the gnarled glob of scars that ran across his ankle. "Were a mob arrow that gave Ingo this here lovely. Back in the last war, twenty-two years and gone. He owes the mobs – an' all the bastards that follow Ganon – a bit o' pain."

I nodded, the gesture absent of any meaning. "Good luck with that." I started to turn away.

"Oy. Linus."

When I looked at Ingo, he stared back at me, deadpan.

"Ingo can see your dingus."

I considered this. "Thank you, Ingo. I hadn't realized that. That's very helpful." Just as expressionless as my savior, I asked, "Don't suppose you'll let me take that robe of yours, would you?"

Ingo cackled. "You think Ingo's wearing anything 'neath this? Even Ingo don't have the guts to go huntin' boks in the buff."

I imitated Ingo's mirthless laugh and gave him the finger. One tangled eyebrow rose in non-recognition.

With that, we parted ways. Ingo disappeared into the subterranean fog, and I plodded off to parts yet unknown. We left the corpse behind for someone else to deal with.


	15. 15

**15**

The corridor that had jogged left from the T-junction had initially seemed quite long, but this turned out to be an illusion. A trick of the light and a slight downward slope of the floor. I proceeded for only a minute or so before the hallway concluded in a trio of doors, one for each wall of the dead end. I flexed my toes against the baking floor-rock and cursed every decision I had ever made in the entirety of my life.

Two of the doors, to my left and directly ahead, were the same kind of steel monstrosities as the one that had led into the subbasements. Both had foreboding Hylian words stenciled onto their surfaces. The door to my right sat in a dark alcove, as if trying to hide from the others. It was the same kind of wooden, ring-pull door as the ones that had divided up the second floor of the bathhouse, though this was stained an innocuous brown. Having had my fill of large, ominous portals, I decided to try the latter entrance. When I tried to pull it open, I received a jolt of side-splitting pain as a reward. Goddammit. The cut across my abdomen may not have been fatal, but it was starting to seriously piss me off.

When I did get the door open, the air cooled about me so suddenly that my skin seemed to contract in shock. Fine hairs along my neck and forearms rose and vibrated as if perplexed.

The chamber I stepped into was, in fact, a cozy sort of den or office. It wasn't much larger than my bedroom back home in Los Angeles, with whitewashed walls and a low ceiling. Bright light suffused the room, making my eyes blink in surprise after the incessant darkness of the maintenance corridors. Most of the glow emanated from a big, globular lamp that hung from the ceiling in the center of the room. To my right sat a small, well-used-looking couch, flanked by a scuffed end table and a gnomish bookcase stuffed with incomprehensible texts. Scattered across the walls were a pair of smallish tapestries that appeared to depict gorons in florid and almost religious poses and several hand-drawn charts and diagrams that may have had to do with valve workings.

Opposite the entrance was another of the heavy industrial doors, its rough bolts and hinges complimenting the warmth of the office like a tombstone at a wedding reception.

It took me only a moment to figure out why the temperature had dropped as I stepped into the room: In each of the corners, where the walls met the ceiling, sat a shining bottle nestled in a wooden sconce. Sinuous feelers of mist crawled from each open container. Ah. Refrigerator potion, or whatever it was called. Air conditioning. Perfect for a refuge amid this torrid labyrinth.

I pulled a cool, relieved breath and gently shut the door behind me. The hiss and chug and thump of the maintenance levels fell into a distant, vaguely ominous chant. Smells of old seeped-in tobacco, ink, paper dust, and something peculiarly chemical rose to overthrow the previous overlords of sulfur and mildew.

A single plush, heavy-threaded carpet had been laid over what I presumed was a bare stone floor. Interlocked, arabesque designs of red and gold wove across its surface. When my toes met it, they sank luxuriantly into its fibers. I smiled at the small pleasure and walked over to the desk to inspect its contents. It was a blocky, unpretentious thing, carved and assembled from knotted wood and stained haphazardly. I realized that it was much lower to the ground than I had initially thought, as was the ramshackle chair that sat in front of it.

I relaxed my shoulders, gingerly set the Master Sword down against the side of the desk, and settled into the chair. Its seat was set incredibly low to the ground, but is back was bowed out in a way that I could lean back into it and not have my knees rise to my crotch. Generally uncomfortable. A child's chair, I thought. Wait. No. Stupid. This furniture is built for gorons. I smiled weakly.

Sitting like this brought all the half-forgotten aches and pains of the past ruckus into sharper focus. Now was as good a time as any. I contorted my body so I could finally get a look at the laceration on my side.

It had stopped weeping blood, thank God. The entire side of my body from the wound down was painted in a variegated sheet of red, burgundy, and black. Tentacles of dried and cracked blood extended down my right leg. Chunks of the stuff, mostly clotted, were tangled in my pubic hair. The wound itself was thankfully not as bad as it felt. Long – running the whole length of my lower ribs – but fairly shallow. Something that an emergency room might not even grace with stitches.

Burned like a bastard, though.

I turned my attention back to my surroundings, wondering idly if this place was at all safe. Scanning the desk, I found the following occupying its surface: A clay pot stopped with a huge cork, its surface stained with runnel-ghosts of old ink; a massive quill, topped with a silver feather; a wooden box marked with yet more unreadable Hylian; a sheaf of papers stacked crookedly next to the inkpot; two eggshell-white saucers set on the far corner; and, next to the plates, a squat glass decanter filled with a clear liquid.

A clear liquid. No: Not just a _clear liquid_; water. _Water_.

My thirst was suddenly so momentous that it was stunning. I rose quickly and almost knocked over the chair. The wound in my side and my bruised shoulder sang a hateful little duet. I looked around for a cup or glass. On one of the saucers was a clay mug without a handle, half-filled with a dark liquid – tea, perhaps. On the other sat the pleasing curve of a pipe, beautifully carved from dark wood and decorated with angular designs. Fresh ashes spilled from its bowl and onto the white surface of the china. Other than these items, no sign of the office's most recent occupant remained.

Deciding against ruining the fine rug by tossing the tea on it, I grabbed the whole decanter and raised it to my lips. As cool as the room was, the water flowed past my lips warm and tepid. No matter: The mere sensation of it sliding over my tongue and tonsils was beautiful. Glorious. I drank half the bottle, belched unceremoniously, and set it back on the desk. Thank you, Mystery Goron, I thought. You rock.

I felt awfully self-conscious, then – as if this room's owner might burst in at any moment and find me, naked as the day I was born, shuffling through his stuff. I took another (slightly guilty) slug of water and prepared to leave.

Pragmatism overwhelmed that rush of irrational modesty: What if the office held some extra clothes?

I began casting about the room, rifling the bookshelves and checking (ridiculously) behind the couch. I stopped short of lifting the edge of the carpet, paused with the absurdity of the situation, and released a hoarse laugh. Jesus. Get a grip. This is some kind of glorified break room, not some guy's bedroom. Even if the goron who sat at this desk, smoking and sipping his tea, had kept a change of clothes, they wouldn't even remotely fit.

There was a creak of hinges. The rasp of a hand pulling against heavy wood.

I turned stiffly, almost automatically, and gazed back at the door through which I had entered. It stood partially open. Within the blaze of light that filled the office, the outer hallway appeared as a vertical slice of semi-black purgatory, roiling with mists and the sounds of infernal devices. Within that dark line was a single, huge, pale eyeball. Its pupil was the color of a bruised orange. Above it, four eggplant-purple fingers gripped the edge of the door.

I stared at the eye. It stared back. A heavy, vein-covered eyelid blinked over it.

As methodically as it had entered, the bokoblin behind the door now shut it. As if it were a concerned parent, peeking into a child's room after the lights go out. The door made a quiet _thunk _as it came to rest against the casement.

I thought I heard shuffling footsteps beyond – first careful, and then gaining speed.

That time again already? My shoulders sagged. "Aw, shit," I whined. "Shit. Shit. _Shit_." The last iteration of the word escaped my lips along with a sigh that might have accompanied a leprosy diagnosis.

The Master Sword scooped into my hand. I regarded the last of the water in the decanter. Fuck it. I threw back the rest of the absent goron's water, licked a pair of lingering drops off my upper lip, and set to figuring out the fastest and best way out of this hell-pit.

Not that I had much to go on, of course. The only orientation I had, so far, was Ingo's generalized directions back to the ground floor of the bathhouse. Whether I was headed for the nigh-mythical supply tunnel was entirely up in the air. I had bounced from corridor to corridor in the maintenance level for some time (however long it actually had been was another of those vast unknowns) and, as a result, the tunnel could be on the absolute other side of the bathhouse. For all I knew, I had run past it in my desperate, idiot escape from that lone bokoblin sentry.

Skitter, scratch, hiss: Sounds different than the usual symphony of pipe- and conduit-music approached from beyond the office door. Whoever the creepy little bastard was, he was quick. More friends were coming to play.

That settled it, then: I marched across the den, closed my eyes, enjoyed five last seconds of the glorious cool air and carpeting, and grasped the handle of the outer, metal door. When I pulled it open, I was confronted by another set of stairs. These led down a straight, rough-cut stairwell. A lonely oil lamp presided over the steep drop, hanging from a single splintery rafter. Though I could see the bottom of these stairs, they appeared to lead down onto an entirely different level of subbasement.

God . . . _damnit. _How far down does this thing go? Is this a bathhouse or a fucking fortress?

I took these stairs with a sense of rising, prickly dread. How could this possibly be the right way out? I was almost certain that Smythe had not mentioned another basement below the first one.

Christ, Linus. This doesn't matter. It's not like you can go back the way you came now. Not unless you have a sharp desire to tussle it up with those little monsters again.

I hit the bottom of the stone steps at a trot, tore open another steel door, and gasped as a belch of blast-furnace air rushed about my body. The moist hand of a burning giant seemed to wrap about me and playfully, painfully squeeze my chest. Every lungful of air was so heavy with sublimated water and the taste of sulfur that I wondered, half in a panic, whether I could even breathe it at all. It took a few gulps of the stuff to convince me that it wasn't toxic, which in hindsight was not a very well-thought plan.

I found myself in another dim, red-lit alcove. The walls and undulating floor were bare cavern rock. A dizzying array of gauges, valves, and massive cisterns surrounded the room. There was, blessedly, only one exit.

A twisting comma of corridor ran away from the alcove, its walls and ceiling unadorned except for sconces holding flickering, ruby-colored lamps. The floor was consistently wet and, though I hurried, I had to be careful to not to slip and bust my ass. This access corridor opened perpendicularly onto a wide, yawning passageway with curved walls. Titanic pipelines ran the passage's length, resting where the walls of the passage met the floor. Each was as big around as a beer keg and segmented like a tremendous, copper-skinned earthworm. The passageway breathed a constant river of hot, flatulent wind. Under the glow of crimson lanterns and surrounded by the constant slosh and drip of warm water, it was as if I had just stepped into the bowels of some slumbering, subterranean titan.

I tried momentarily to discern the direction of the suffocating air flow, in yet another fruitless attempt to discover the way out. It proved useless because the air, though swimming and rushing in invisible currents, never seemed to settle for any one single direction. For that matter, there was no time to lose just standing there with my nose upturned and a stupid look on my face. I made yet another internal coin flip and turned right, jogging briskly down the length of stone intestine.

My astonishment at the vastness of the undercrofts only grew in the minutes that followed. The passageway curved slowly to the left. Other corridors and pipe-lined passages branched away from it, disappearing into red or yellow-tinged rooms and grottoes. At decreasing intervals, I paused to sound out any further pursuit. Standing in any single spot was quickly becoming painful. These sweltering tunnels were clearly never meant to be navigated by anyone in bare feet.

Hair clung to my neck under a gluey flow of sweat. My head began to ache. Every injury across and within my body seemed to pulse in time with the shifts in the tunnel's air current. My eyes stung and swam with sweat, tears, dirt, and steam that hung heavy in the air like sentient, malevolent clouds.

Up ahead, a black puddle sat rippling within a crater near the center of the passage. I slowed, and then tested the liquid with one twitching toe. Just water. Very warm, but at least it diffused the dull, hungry heat that now bit incessantly at the soles of my feet. I swept dirty sweat from my forehead, blinked half-groggily, and made the usual paranoid visual sweep of my surroundings. A small door marked with a single Hylian letter behind and to the left. Two passages intersected this one ahead of me, each shrouded in a sinister angle of darkness. Though not satisfied with my reconnaissance, I allowed myself to slip into the puddle with both feet. It rose up and lapped tepidly at my ankles. A warm bath in the middle of an active kiln.

I'm going to die down here, I thought. If the little bastards don't catch up to me, I'm going to drop dead of a heat stroke.

I thought I saw movement. A moment passed. A drop of very hot water dripped audibly off the ceiling and landed on my neck. I flinched and looked up to the rafters lining the curve of the ceiling. As I did, the flash of movement came again – this time straight ahead. A pair of low shadows belched from one of the tunnel entrances before me and resolved into two sneering, loping bokoblins.

They didn't hesitate even a second, instead coming down the corridor like a pair of amphetamine-crazed baboons. Knives in two hands; a dull and dented hand-axe in the other. I may have been able to take them – who knows? At that point, my fight-or-flight reflexes were set instinctively to the latter. As soon as the pair of slobbering, gibbering killers exited the side-tunnel, I was turning tail to run.

I don't know whether it was the cloying heat, yet another spike of increasingly sour adrenaline, or the brutally simple exhaustion that had started to weigh down every thought and action . . . but my memories of the next several minutes have an elastic, dreamlike quality. I remember hearing the grunts and titters of the two bokoblins as they snapped at my heels. I remember the tunnel curving to the right as I dashed back the way I had come. I remember turning the corner and feeling my heart try to climb up my esophagus.

I distinctly remember the three other bokoblins that stood in the middle of the passageway, tapping their feet and looking as if they had been kept waiting by a particularly rude party guest.

However, when I try to remember any _detail _of those moments – the angles of the tunnel, the individual weapons held by the idling bokoblins, how long it took me to scramble around and face the two bokoblins that had sprung from the side tunnel – I have a hard time of it. It's like trying to recall the implicit meaning of some dream object that you take for granted until waking. It's all sketches in charcoal and red lipstick.

Hemmed in on both sides, outnumbered worse than I had been at any point since Elkan and Karrik had sent me running, I spun about in a mind-numb panic. I found the door that I had ever-so-briefly noted as I cooled my feet n the puddle. As I dashed into it and felt it fall open under my weight, I had only a half-second to note that the original two bokoblins had come to a halt. Wretched little giggles followed me as I sprinted down a new, narrow hallway.

The hall spat me into one of the connective passages I had glimpsed from the main corridor. I veered left, ducked under a low overhang of steam-spitting pipes, and charged through another doorway. The light changed. Anatomical red was replaced by a sterile white glow of a sort that I had not seen since stepping into Hyrule.

The room was almost uncomfortably different than everything else in this level of the bathhouse. It was a cubical, dry, clean room. Simple blue tiles covered the floor. Though they were warm, they weren't as nearly uncomfortable to walk on as the stone passages. Strange, hissing lamps pulsed about the walls and gave off the fluorescent halos of pale light. More of the huge, segmented pipes ran along the bottoms of the walls, some of which turned vertically and ran up through the ceiling. At the base of each of these towering pipelines was a round, fogged window or porthole, ringed with clicking and jittering gauges.

There were three other doors set in each of the other three walls. Two of these were double doors, clearly designed to swing in and out as if out connecting onto banquet halls.

A pile of dirty linen lay crumpled in one of the corners. A dark stain sat in the tiles about it. Oily rags, I thought.

It was through one of the pairs of heavy double doors that, mere moments after I had set foot in the room, the full pack of bokoblins marched. They came in a ragged bunch, each one bumping open the doors in a haughty and rather exaggerated manner. They had known I would arrive here, I realized. Somehow, they had scouted the place out and found the perfect little room to trap me in.

For some mad, unpleasant reason, my eyes floated to that heap of stained laundry sitting forlorn in the corner. Something glinted in it darkly, like a curve of black porcelain. Then I saw the crook of a blunt, pale gray finger and a waxing-moon sliver of a black button eye. My breath caught painfully as I realized that this mound of rags was actually a dead goron.

No. No no. Not another. Another victim of my thoughtless stupidity.

I tried (once again) to escape back the way I had come, but as I took the first step backward, I heard the door bump open. A mushy, grotesque laugh sounded at my shoulder. I swung around to face yet another bokoblin. Despite his cracked lips, puffy cheeks, and a crust of blood slathered over most of his face, I recognized the same creature that I had kneed in the mouth upstairs. He grinned painfully and advanced into the room.

"Ah, no," I muttered. "No no no."

My feet backpedaled in an effort to keep distance between the two of us . . . only to bring me straight into the reach the gaggle of five other bokoblins. They began to hoot and babble, pumping their fists in the air triumphantly. The group extended its flanks, boxing me in almost completely. Alien jeers and catcalls buffeted me as the band of purple and black creatures stomped its feet, brandished its weapons, and made ready to cut me to ribbons.

Unlike the chief moblin language – which I eventually learned to understand in dribs and drabs – I cannot even begin to approximate bokoblin speech. I was inundated in a tumult of throaty buzzes and trills, nasal consonants like snorting livestock, and pitched, hissing mewls.

Through it all, I watched as my good friend – the one who had gifted me with the slash across my abdomen – pointed his sword at me and croaked, "Gut. You! Paaallll-beh-lee!"

All about me, the bokoblins bobbed and clicked and swung their respective weapons in languid parabolas. I pulled the Master Sword from my side and slipped both shaking hands about its hilt.

"Do it," I rasped. "C'mon. Don't have all fucking day."

For all the weak-stew bravado of my words, there were tears in my eyes and a sensation of burning sand in my chest. I held my sword at the ready and waited for them to come.

Beyond one of the pairs of swinging doors, out in the thudding guts of bathhouse, there came a intense, warbling sound: A howl like something issued from the frozen shore of the Styx. At once horrifying and dismal, exotic and familiar, it took only a moment to recognize its source.

Any strength in my forearms disappeared as if it had never existed in the first place. My sword fell and pointed toward the floor, held in the air only by the muscle memory of my fingers. To my deep mortification, I realized that my lower lip quivered as if I were about to burst into tears.

All of the bokoblins fell silent. Their frenzied gyrations ceased. Slowly, as if coming down from a feverish high, they began to simultaneously back away from me and clump closer together. I watched as the fellow that had dueled with me in the maintenance corridors grimaced and spat. Disappointment wrinkled his bruised features.

From the direction of the howl, new sounds crawled and scrabbled beneath the incessant undercroft clamor: A sinuous sound of a great body swishing through the muggy air currents. An anxious, reptilian yip. The soft rumble of whispered, reassuring words. The ugly clack of giant nails on stone.

I took two largely involuntary steps backward. My chest heaved and it felt like my bones were petrifying into a single paralyzed mass.

I realized, with no sense of surprise whatsoever, that I had never this frightened in the entirety of my life.

A grunt, a shimmy, a snorted exhalation of breath like a locomotive: A colossal head nudged open the double doors. The little crowd parted, three bokoblins to a side. The wolfos – at once heavy-pawed and graceful, lupine and saurian – passed between them as if receiving parade honors. Yrbor sauntered into the cubical room – which I much later learned was used for inspecting newly-pumped spring water – with a half-quizzical, half-bored air about him. Leaning back in the saddle, Elkan Fir-Bulbin beamed like a sultan.

The moblin commander and I gazed into one another's eyes for almost a full minute. I could think of nothing to say – nothing to do. Somewhere in my mind, the Other Me had curled into an angular ball and gibbered that this was all a dream, all a dream, just a nightmare, please wake up, Jesus Christ almighty just let me wake up.

Yrbor clacked his lipless chaws and chuffed. As if on cue, Elkan spread his arms and bellowed, "Behold the man!"

The crowd of bokoblins snickered.

Elkan threw his bulk forward in the saddle. In one gloved hand, he still carried the halberd he had wielded up on the third floor of the bathhouse. With the other, he made a magnanimous gesture. "How are we met, stranger? You look as if you could use a bath."

When the next round of bokoblin laughter died down, I said, "I've been better."

"Oh?" The moblin rolled back dramatically, put his hand to his chest, and clutched at invisible pearls. His monocle flashed white as heat lightning. "That is _most _vexing, sir. After all, this great dance of dances has been arranged _especially _in your honor." He favored me with a smile full of big, animal teeth. "I myself have been having an absolutely riveting time. I have killed five people today, my friend. It's not a record . . . but I must say it has been dashing good fun."

I looked past Elkan and his stooges to the rumpled, pathetic corpse in the corner. I remembered bronze eyes and a delicate, understanding smile. A line – thin and taut and red as magma – sliced through my brain. "You asshole," I snarled. "You sadistic fucking piece of shit."

"Ah ah!" Elkan raised a forefinger and waved it with the air of a schoolmarm. "You mustn't let yourself be caught up in unnecessary emotions, outerlander. No reason to spoil a perfectly good mood. No reason we can't be civil."

"Civil, my bony white a –!"

"After all," Elkan continued, oblivious, "we have such things to discuss, you and I."

At this, the humming violin string of rage that resonated in my mind, exhorting my body to take up my sword and _charge just charge_, quieted. "What?" I managed.

Elkan was already in motion. He urged his wolfos into a sideways scramble, pointing to the bokoblins with his weapon as he did. Elkan clicked, grunted, said a few barely-recognizable moblin words, and then emitted an almost-playful whistle. The bokoblin mob looked collectively more and more abashed and humiliated as the order progressed, their shoulders bowing and their eyes narrowing to inscrutable slits. One by one, the bokoblins that had chased me into this strange little room turned and exited the same way that they had come.

The bokoblin whose teeth I had broken – whose smoke break I had interrupted, I thought – was the last to go. He looked me with a saucer-eyed expression that suggested simultaneous frustration, loathing, and pity. He pointed his sword in my direction, produced a pair of clicks in the back of his throat, and then went through the door.

I never saw him again.

So, there we were: Just Elkan Fir-Bulbin, myself, and a sinewy horror named Yrbor. The commander of the Southern Raiders, a prize mount of a nightmare army, and some dipshit stoner who hadn't had the balls to say, _Hey guys, look what I just found._

I would have laughed if I hadn't been so terrified.

Elkan's eyes roved over me with a hunger that I might have considered sexual, if I hadn't also seen the bloodthirsty, predatory glint behind it. He was sizing me up not because of my nakedness, but because I was prey. A shivering animal caught in the crosshairs. Beneath Elkan, Yrbor began to pace the length of the room. His hairless calves twitched impatiently.

"So," I finally said. "Just you and me and baby makes three. Where's your dick of a brother?"

"Ah. Yes. I ordered Karrik to stay behind and reinforce our barricades. Apparently, word somehow reached the town guard about the, ah, _situation_ in the bathhouse," Elkan said thoughtfully. "In any event, I could not allow his irrational hatred of you, how shall I say, _spoil the moment_. After all," he raised his bestial eyebrows, "you _are _the man of the hour."

"Yeah, yeah," I said. Not this shit again. "I crashed your little Ku Klux Klan rally yesterday. Power to the pigs and all that horseshit. Pigshit." I coughed. "Whatever. If you're just going to gloat about Clan Butthole's glorious revenge, you can skip the standard villain speech. I'm officially sick of it."

Elkan slowly set the halberd down lengthwise across his knees, balancing the weight of it against the horn of his saddle. He clasped his hands and regarded me sagely. "You do not seem to have taken my meaning, outerlander. The reason why I have arranged this little chat."

"Why don't you get on with it?" I spat.

He removed his monocle with one hand and produced a handkerchief with the other. Elkan began to wipe at the eyepiece absently. "You have to savor this sort of thing, stranger. Learn to enjoy life." I couldn't tell whether the following chuckle was mocking or sympathetic. He carefully set the monocle back in its place. "And as much as _I _enjoy watching your kind squirm and plead, I haven't tracked you down just to mock you. Oh, at first I thought it would be just that – that the idea that Karrik's story birthed in me would be just another idle fancy brought on by too many nights under the stars. But, after we first met, I knew that you and I would have to meet alone. To talk. Just you and I, stranger."

Elkan's gaze was gray and pitiless. His voice was like the quiet grinding of bones. "Or should I call you, 'Hero?'"

I blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Don't play coy with me," Elkan rumbled. "We both know who you are – or perhaps, if fate be kind, who you play at being."

I knew, then. The Other Me knew. I drew in on myself, the world attempting to recede with me. Corners grew soft. I found it suddenly difficult to maintain my balance.

For some reason, my mouth said, "I have no fucking idea what you're talking about."

Elkan's mouth twisted into an enraged grimace. His tusks jutted from his lips, wet and gleaming with saliva. He grabbed the halberd and swept it out in a furious arc that brought the blade less than a foot away from my face. Its passing fanned hot, acrid air up my nostrils.

He bellowed, "Do not lie to me, you palebelly wretch! Do you not carry the sword? Do you not bear the mark?"

"W-what mark?"

Elkan jabbed the halberd in my direction. "There! Right there! The mark upon your arm, you dolt! The Triforce of the Hylian gods!"

My neck moved like it was propelled by rusting springs. On my left bicep, perfectly visible despite the layer of blood and grime covering the rest of my body, was my tattoo. A perfect, black-on-flesh Triforce.

When I managed to raise my eyes back to Elkan, the anger had drained from his expression, leaving something far more detached and antiseptic.

"Y-you . . . you think," I gulped. "You th-think that I'm the Hero. That I'm Link."

"Who other?" he grunted. "You bear the Sword of the Temple – the weapon of darshan, they say. The Master of All Swords. At the very least, quite a skilled facsimile. More than that, you also carry on your skin that mark, clear and clean as day." Elkan scratched at his ample chin contemplatively. "Do you mind shedding light on something for me, lad? Scholars of history and mythology are of two schools of thought regarding mark borne by the Hero. One says that the Hero is born bearing it, while the other states that it must manifest when he is called to destiny. Which was it, outerlander?"

"I'm not the Hero," I said reflexively.

He chuckled. "Disabuse me of the notion. Please."

I couldn't lie. How could I? Why should I? What point was there in hiding the truth, teetering this close to the edge of death?

"It's not real," I murmured.

"Come again?" Elkan said mildly. "Speak up, lad. It's unbecoming of a – haha – man of your stature to mumble."

"It's not real!" I shouted. I winced at the terror and shame that broke through my voice. I sounded like a child both enraged and humiliated at being caught doing something forbidden. "The 'mark' isn't real. I w-wasn't born with it." God. Stop sniveling, Linus. Out with it. "It's a tattoo. I paid someone to make it. Wasn't . . . wasn't born with it. Or any of that. S'not real at all." I let out a quavery sigh. "Just a tattoo."

As I had babbled out my explanation, Elkan's eyes had grown gradually larger and larger. As I fell silent, feeling a hitch in my chest as if I were about to sob hysterically, those eyes were a pair of smudged cue balls. Beyond stunned, he simply looked at me in limp bewilderment.

Yrbor sniffed at the swimming atmosphere. The wolfos snorted and whined like a table saw.

With a whole-body spasm so sudden that it caused his mount to leap into the air, Elkan abruptly tilted his head and began to scream laughter. He laughed as he had when I had – more or less – asked him to spare me on the third floor of the bathhouse. There was a wild, unfettered, naked quality to it now – as if what I had just revealed was the greatest and most profane joke he had ever heard.

"Hahahaha! Oh – that is – oh my!" The flanks of the wolfos beneath Elkan twitched nervously. Still he laughed. "Oh – hahaha! Oh! Stranger! If ever I needed more evidence that the Hylian religion is a grotesque farce, this is it, isn't it? A _tattoo_? That is delicious, outerlander. Absolutely . . . delicious!" He laughed and slumped to the side, his halberd falling limply toward the floor.

Had I not been captivated by the bizarre spectacle, I would have realized that this would have been an ideal moment to escape. To this day, I still have such realizations about such moments.

Elkan seemed to regain his composure, though he wiped at the corners of his eyes and produced a seemingly endless stream of chuckles. "Oh. Oh my. Hahaha! And to think – and to think that I almost _believed. _What folly. What farce. I think I shall continue to call you, 'Hero,' outerlander. The irony of it amuses me."

"What does it matter?" I barked, giving in to the web of anger that pulled itself over my embarrassed docility. "It's not as if you wouldn't have killed me anyway!"

Elkan shook his head. With his free hand, he took hold of Yrbor's reins and urged the animal forward. The bored wolfos seemed all too happy to oblige him, and it began to step in a leisurely, measured circle about me. I had to turn my entire body to follow the monster, unwilling to let it even enter my peripheral vision. A slow, stationary pirouette.

"No, Hero. In point of fact, Lord Ganon has issued a decree that any evidence of the so-called 'Hero of the Triforce' be immediately sent to him, personally. While the order is vague in its execution, any citizens of the Protectorate are to 'repress and preserve' anyone with the traits of, or claiming to be, the Hylian Hero." A haughty, conspiratorial laugh. "I personally captured a fellow claiming to be the Link nearly a year ago. He was a liar and thief, of course. I didn't even give him the courtesy of staking his head outside my camp."

Battered and confused as I was, it was difficult to parse this information. "Are you saying that, if I had just lied and told you that this thing popped up like a rash," I jabbed a finger at the Triforce on my arm, "that you wouldn't have killed me?"

"As with most of the decrees issued directly by Ganon, the orders regarding the Hero are vague at best." Elkan canted his head to the side and shrugged. "To be perfectly honest, I believe I would have killed you anyway. Imagine the perfection of such propaganda. 'Death of the Hylian Hero.' Lovely, isn't it?"

My intestines tried to tie themselves into nonsensical knots. It came to me, not for the first time, that my time was drawing short. Elkan was a true sadist – the sort that enjoyed the spectacle of terror and helplessness he caused before administering the deathblow. That spectacle was, I sensed, drawing to a close.

My eyes skated across the room, to the double doors opposite the way I had come in. I had no idea what lay beyond them. A dead end, for all I knew. It was better than nothing. Anything was better than the powerless, locked-in position I currently occupied.

Think, Linus. Yrbor and his rider walked left to right, arcing lazily to my side. I turned to follow them. This isn't hard: The guy likes to talk. Gets off on the sound of his own voice. He actually sent away all of his backup (not that he needs any, sweet Jesus) just to sate his curiosity about me.

Stall. Stall and look for an opening.

"So," I coughed, not quite sure where to start. "Ganon doesn't want Link dead."

"Perhaps. With this new evidence of the Hylian goddesses' impotence, I imagine it's only a precautionary order."

"And . . . and," I stammered. "And – Ganon!" Yes. Good. "Who the fuck is he, anyway? If you don't think the Hero is real, where do you get off talking about Ganon like he's wandering around, handing out cigars and lighters on the front lines?"

Elkan's eyebrow rose bemusedly. He made a fist and drew his wolfos to a halt. Yrbor dug a claw irritably across the floor. The sound it produced made the bones of my inner ear ache. The pair now rested diagonally and to the left of me, about twelve feet away, just barely blocking my (vaguely) planned route to the door.

"Do you deny the existence of Ganon, Hero?" Elkan asked. His tone was not angry or offended – if anything, it was one of fascinated amusement.

I rolled my neck and shoulders, trying unsuccessfully to banish the bruised tightness that rolled through my upper body. "I have no idea. Haven't been in the neighborhood very long, obviously."

"Obviously."

"A lot of people are scared shitless of him. Ganon. But, from what I hear, no one knows anything about him. Never even seen him. He's a blank. A boogieman."

Elkan grinned and raised a hand reverently to his chest. "No gods but those we choose. No kings but ourselves," he intoned.

"What?"

Still smiling, Elkan said, "Our creed. The mantra and the motto of our mighty Protectorate. _That _is Ganon, Hero."

Genuinely puzzled, I said, "You're gonna have to back up, there."

"In Ganon, we shall have ultimate order. Through Ganon, we shall embrace perfect chaos."

"That makes no sense whatsoever."

"Of course it doesn't!" Elkan laughed. "What kind of an ideology would it be if it did? Ganon is whatever his followers want him to be. He is a god and a hero; a myth and an ideal; truth and illusion. Ganon is the internalized dream of every man that pledges his life to his name."

I took a deep breath, eyed the doorway again, and immediately regretted it. When my gaze moved aside, I heard the tick of wolfos talons on stone. Just a single step. One arced paw. Eyes trained: Don't look away. Don't look away again – not for anything. Not for one second.

"So," I rasped, "what you're saying is that Ganon is bullshit. That he isn't real."

Elkan tapped a finger on the horn of his saddle. It produced an unnerving, repetitive _thunk_. "When I was at the university, I wrote quite an exegesis on just that subject. I postulated that 'Ganon' was a carryall moniker for a number of great chieftains of the Peoples." He saw my confusion, and said, "What you – or rather, the _Hylians – _call 'moblins.' An offensive, unpleasant term. We are many and more, but we are all of the Peoples, Hero. Children of the mountains and of the morning gods.

"In any event, I theorized that these Chieftains have periodically risen up and cast away the chains of Hylian rule when it became too onerous too stand. I put forth that it was invasions of the Peoples that broke apart each Hylian age – that the 'Old Darkness' of the Hylian religion was, in fact, a terrified religious reaction to purely secular warfare."

Elkan sighed. "Of course, those at the university that didn't ridicule me for the essay cried blasphemy and treason. Though I was one of the preeminent scholars of my time, I was threatened with expulsion if I didn't bury the study and promise to never mention it ever again."

"Wait," I said, blinking in disbelief. "Are you saying that you started offing people because you were butthurt over a fucking _academic paper _getting rejected?"

The moblin commander laughed bitterly. "I don't understand much of that sentence, Hero, but its core remains intact. No, I did not join this righteous cause out of spite. The treatment I received at the University of Hylium _did _help me come to see the gross inferiority of the Hylian people. About their pettiness, stupidity, and cowardice. When the call came to all children of the Peoples to rise up, I was all too willing to embrace the creed of Ganon."

"So," I said, tentatively, still trying to figure out the unique, fuzzy geometry of an escape, "Ganon is a moblin chief? Some big, swinging dick who just happened to get everyone pissed off enough to work together?"

The moblin's body language stiffened. He grimaced and said, "I too was skeptical. Even as I fled Hylium and returned to my ancestral lands, I did not believe in the movements of fate, nor in Lord Ganon's divinity. I expected a clan warlord more ambitious than he was intelligent."

Elkan leaned forward and pressed himself against the pommel of his saddle. His eyes glinted hard and unmoving as chunks of basalt. His voice became a low, sibilant, entrancing purr.

"Know this, Hero: I have met with Lord Ganon. I have kneeled before him and beheld his majesty. He anointed me with his trident and bade me bring war to the heartland of our enemies.

"Ganon is real," Elkan crooned, "Ganon is immortal, invincible, eternal. He is the black rock of the mountains. The spear and shield of fate. The fire from beyond time. In his light is the ultimate freedom. His coming heralds an age of endless joy and terror."

The moblin swept his arms out wide. "Heed this truth, Hero! My god is real. Yours are not. And I guarantee that he would shatter your frail body with but a glance."

"Holy shit," I said. "Don't you ever shut up?"

There. I had it. There it was. I only had one chance. Ha – did anyone ever have two chances at such a thing? Obviously not.

"Does such a fell truth bore you, Hero? Or does your denial of my Lord's existence run so deep that you reject even the words of an eyewitness?"

"No," I said, "I get that you believe he exists. Whatever. I get that you're gay for Ganon. And really –"

Now. Go.

I launched to the right. My entire body flexed with the movement, leaving a vapor trail of sweat and pain in its wake.

Though I didn't get a good look at him – so focused was I on those big double doors – I did catch a glimpse of definite shock overwhelming Elkan's features. Yrbor bucked and twisted at the sudden movement, simultaneously alarmed and eager to get back on the hunt. In an instant, I curved back toward the exit, crossing within slashing distance of both halberd and wolfos claws.

My feet flew. I performed a wild, zigzag dance across the smooth tiles. Serpentine art. Murder Night at the club.

The attack that all those bizarre, pain-crackling movements had meant to avoid never came. I pressed my eyelids together and screamed silent obscenities as I goaded my legs to go faster. Muscles went numb and tendons creaked. I sprinted like an antelope and ran full-on into the doors.

God, that hurt.


	16. 16

**16**

Mother of God, I hope I didn't just break my arm.

Of course, I hadn't. Though my much-abused shoulder whined and the rest of my body burst with adrenal, pain-laced static, the doors were rather obliging to me. I was lucky that they swung outward. At once, I was out of the tiled room and into another of those ceaseless, dripping, pipe-lined tunnels. The light sucked out of the air and turned to phantom blood.

Behind me, emerging like a white shark from beneath a sea of noise, came a gale of laughter. Within it, I heard Elkan cry, "Yes! Yes! Absolutely! Yes!" There rose that hideous, unearthly howl, and I knew that the chase had begun again in earnest.

Scorching air ripped in and out of my lungs with like aerosol sandpaper. As ever, my ability to sprint was undone by the need to hold onto the Master Sword. A tinny, hideous voice piped up in my mind: Just throw the damned thing away once and for all. If you get rid of the sword, this ends. Toss it away and you'll wake up in Los Angeles, no worse for wear. You can end it right now!

I had no time to let that awful weed of an idea take root. Just moments after it first sprouted in my gray matter – mere seconds after I had exited the cubical room – the doors smashed open, wood groaning and hinges snapping apart. There was a rush of dark gray through the hellglow – a barrage of claws going _clackclackclack _from behind – a scent of musk and body oil – and suddenly Yrbor sprang past me. He and Elkan barreled up the corridor. The wolfos twisted in midair, its steely muscles moving visibly beneath its dark skin. That chalkboard-awful screech of claws raking rock resounded through the tunnel as Yrbor skidded to a halt.

Elkan's eyepiece shone a molten, rose red. His exposed, grinning teeth were stained an ethereal pink.

I lurched and just managed to check my momentum. As my lips pulled back from my teeth, the ambient tastes stewing in the air collected on my tongue. Swimming pool water; concrete dust; copper wiring; mineral oil. That ever-present flavor of rotten eggs.

A black line rose from the blobbed silhouette of Elkan's body. The halberd flashed. Yrbor opened his jaws and let loose a roar unlike any animal noise I had ever heard.

I threw my gaze about wildly, desperately. To my right, just a few steps behind me, was a dark space set back in the wall. A flicker of feverish light within the shadow revealed a cramped side tunnel, shorter than I was and no more than five feet wide. A low, rickety-looking pipe spanned the entrance to the tunnel. Its joints were gingered with rust. Visible plumes of steam breathed from its seams. It shuddered and gurgled at my approach.

Talons struck stone. The raider commander shouted an excited nonsense syllable and slung himself forward in his saddle, his shadow-form merging with his mount's as if in the creation of some grim new sort of beast.

I bolted right and slipped under the hanging pipe clumsily. My right shoulder brushed its surface; the burning metal bit at my skin like an invisible jellyfish. The cry of agony was out of me before I even knew it was forming. I managed to press forward, hunching down and shuffling like a doomed coalminer as I proceeded down the little tunnel. Behind me, I heard a frustrated puff of wolfos breath and a wordless cry of anger from Elkan.

The narrow conduit ran like a blocky stone capillary, branching from the pulsing artery of the main tunnel. Its bare rock walls sweated a sheen of constant, dripping moisture. The vague flicker of light that had announced the side passage's presence were barely glowing candles sitting in smoke-stained glass cylinders, set haphazardly along the walls. What this little dog-run of a hall was meant for, I had no idea. Not that it mattered – all I knew was, at that moment, Elkan and his pet monster couldn't possibly get inside. Their deprived grunts and growls grew ever quieter.

As I continued to sprint and slide and bumble through the passage, I glanced at the spot where my shoulder had made contact with that blazing steam pipe. A pair of pale blisters domed up from a patch of angry red flesh. The searing ache of the burn was just another voice in the cacophonous pain-symphony that played through my body.

The side passage abruptly vomited me out into another wide corridor, almost identical to the one that led out from the room with blue tiles. I emerged between two bulbous water tanks and stumbled into the hallway with no sense of where it led or to what it connected. If I had been lost before, now I was off the fucking map entirely. I jogged right, farther down the corridor. Blind flight, now. Escape into the hollows of a volcanic anthill.

Swiftly, obscenely, a new sound swelled up the tunnel. Rather, an old one: The ivory tack of wolfos claws layered over two sets of ragged breath. Whipping about midflight, I almost launched off my feet and straight into the floor. Only some old, unnamable reflex kept me from falling on my ass. Again.

A roiling silhouette undulated down the corridor opposite me. Ember-colored flashes of monocle and halberd shone through the shape. Intermittent, excited, panting chuckles trailed it like puffs of diesel exhaust.

I was so tired, so pain-wracked, so tangled in the thoughtless web of fight-or-flight reflex, that Elkan's reappearance didn't surprise me. What _did _surprise me was the honest dismay that spread through my chest like a corpse flower. I thought that such disappointment would have disappeared by now, but I couldn't deny my single, untamable thought: You're fucking kidding me.

I should've just stayed in that little side-passage, where neither could reach me. And where you would have been trapped like a skinny rat behind a refrigerator, I thought miserably.

A mad scramble ensued, dismally pointless. I ran despite the exhausted futility of it. I swung left into the first junction that presented itself, even though I was fairly certain that it was taking me back into territory I had already covered. My heart thudded through a sludge of leaden despair.

Around barrels; beneath pipes; over spare construction supplies – I ran. Faster. Faster, goddamn you!

Ever behind me: Porcine laughter; a wolf's breath; the swing and sound and ripple of beastflesh. Inevitability given form.

Two more turns – each into smaller hallways, away from the main corridors. It was impossible that these undercrofts could be this vast. I continually looked about in bewilderment, expecting to see the telltale signs that I had been going in circles.

No such luck: I found myself in a bleak new area, the walls unsculpted and the halls lit with slow-eyed little lanterns like willow-the-wisps. Those immense, segmented, heat-thrumming pipes lay along the walls and floors like neatly piled lines of copper intestine.

The air was too thick with steam to see where this new passage led. I slowed, making my way between the sloshing, grumbling pipelines as if I were navigating a tightrope over a bed of exposed lava. Given the throbbing burn on my shoulder, I realized that this wasn't far from the truth.

There were doors between some of the pipes, set like tomb slabs into the irregular rock walls of the passage. When I stopped to examine the first of these, the floor bit hotly at my toes. Each door was of a type even heavier and sturdier than the steel portals that littered the rest of the maintenance levels. Like the others, they were painted with bold Hylian words. This one had that same impressionistic curl of flame as the first door I had taken into these godforsaken basements. There was, however, one final difference that made my throat tighten and my arms shiver. Beneath the fire hieroglyphic was yet another undeniable, constant symbol: A stylized skull, stenciled in black over the gleaming metal. It grinned flatly, without pity or judgment.

"HERO!"

I couldn't muster the will to spin or twirl or whip about to face that happy bellow. Instead, I shuffled my feet like a scolded child and turned down the corridor with an exasperated sigh on my lips.

The steam saturating the air whirled and danced like a hyperactive fogbank. A sketchy, black shape pushed through the mist, gaining definition with lazy, clicking steps. Elkan and his mount parted the haze and paused some twenty feet away. I realized that, Elkan and Yrbor now blocked the way back.

"Merry chase, Hero! Merry chase!" Elkan shouted. His gray skin glowed faintly with a layer of moisture. "Why do you run? Can I really be so very terrifying?"

The moblin nudged his boots into his mount's sides. The wolfos snorted and took a step. I took a step backward. Yrbor took another. So did I.

"Enough running," Elkan crooned. "Come, Hero! Show me your power! Strike me down with your divine sword! Bring forth the wrath of your goddesses! Summon a storm! Move through time! Transform into a beast!"

Although I was preoccupied with matching my pace opposite the wolfos, I found that I suddenly held the Master Sword in both hands. It sat stiffly at the end of my outstretched arms, as if I were attempting to banish a vampire with a blessed cross.

Elkan urged Yrbor on faster, corralling me down the blind length of sweltering corridor. "What's wrong? You have to believe, Hero! Don't you _believe_? I believe, Hero!" He cackled. "I _believe_! Do you not have the courage to fight back? The wisdom to outsmart me? The power to do anything but shit on yourself and die?"

I allowed myself to glance about, hoping for yet another exit. Behind me loomed the end of the corridor – a mist-choked cul-de-sac ringed with pipelines. At the terminus of the corridor was one last steel door. Another skull stared from its surface. A very literal dead end.

"Oh ho," Elkan chuckled. "Now what, my heroic little rabbit?" He stalked no more than ten feet away. Just a flex of muscle between him and my vitals.

I reached back and gripped the handle of the death's head door. I expected it to be hot enough to char flesh, but like the others of its type, it was preternaturally, ominously cool to the touch. When I wrenched it open, every muscle in my back and torso wailed with the effort. I didn't check to see if Elkan still followed; I simply threw myself through the doorway and into the space beyond.

Everyone, I suspect, has a personal scale of association by which they gauge sensations. Certain colors, tastes, feelings, and odors all carry connotations influenced by individual memories. Life experiences calibrate our expectations of, and reactions to, these sensations.

To this day, I still associate the idea – the very _concept_ – of "hot" with what I encountered beyond that final door.

Unlike my entrance into the subbasement, it was not a sudden transition. I realized the scale and force of this new heat gradually, only coming to grips with it fully when I realized that it was becoming very difficult to breath. This new chamber, I comprehended far too late, was as hot and wet as a giant pressure cooker.

I fumbled my way into a colossal, irregular gash of a cavern. The ceiling bulged downward unnervingly, giving the titanic space a paradoxically claustrophobic feel. Though most of the overhanging stone potbelly sat shrouded in gloom, what I could see of it was dotted with the glistening nubs of half-formed stalactites. In shape, the cavern resembled a partially melted and stretched Frisbee, with portions of the disc deformed higher than a bowed and lumpy center. The door into this weird grotto led out onto one of these comparatively level lips, which rose up above the rest of the space.

Man, if this is a Frisbee, I mused, it had to have belonged to someone the size of Mount Everest. Perhaps the same giant whose rocky guts I had been rambling through all this time. Yet another useless bit of brain jetsam tumbling in a sea of fatigue and mania.

Lanterns were strung together in undulating lines across the cavern walls. Each cast a globe of pale, misty brilliance that swam and rippled through the tropical murk.

The floor of the cave looked like an undulating sea of old candle wax that had melted out over a saucer and been left to petrify. It shone with rippling bands of blacks, grays, and earthen reds, all of it glittering slightly in the wan lamplight. The rocks beneath my feet fell toward the center of the cavern, forming an ovoid bowl that sloped unevenly toward a steam-choked nadir.

Two of the big, wormlike pipelines crawled from this hazy central depression and plowed straight into the wall – one about twenty feet to my right. Through the wall, I realized, and out into the corridors, hallways, and conduits. The other pipe slithered like a bronze anaconda over the grotto floor, finally terminating in a shadowy crater somewhere off to my left.

Down in the center of the cavern, I could just barely make out a tall, rounded shape moving with slow and exacting rhythm. As the bank of churning vapor ebbed, I saw that this mystery contraption was, in fact, a languidly turning waterwheel. The dark, sturdy wood of its many parts shone like wet iron through the drifting banks of steam. Attached to the wheel was the stout arm a piston that pumped methodically in time with the device's revolutions. Each time the piston fell, a curt belch of steam erupted into the air.

Even as the bare rock burned angrily at my feet, I lurched onto the slope and toward this landmark, headed toward the lowest point of the cavern.

As isolated this place was, it was still soaked in noise. The pipelines glooshed and pinged and chugged. Water droplets played split-splatting songs from seemingly every angle. Each time the waterwheel turned and its piston dropped, there was an attendant _thrunk, _followed by a chorus of _thrisss._

As the uneven surface of the cavern fell, the ambient heat grew to a muggy, pulsating crescendo. I was long past being able to tell whether the fluid coursing across my body was sweat or ambient moisture. At the same time, the dirty shroud about the place grew thinner and more manageable. I was able to see where I was going.

I found myself approaching the shore of an astonishingly azure subterranean lake. Well – "pond" is probably more accurate. Compared to the tremendous pit that held it, the circle of burbling blue water was a mere blemish, about the size of an Olympic swimming pool at most. The waterwheel crowded up on the far side of the lake, itself squatting on top of what looked like a waterlogged dock house. It was from this sagging structure that the two pipelines originated on their journey up through the grotto.

So: This is where they get all that hot bathwater. Far out, I thought. I was more than slightly delirious.

It was hard not to admire the pure, sapphire purity of the spring water. Beneath a constantly unraveling layer of foggy steam, the pond's surface was like a sheet of stained glass. Sporadically, rude gangs of bubbles would rise up from the indigo depths of the pond and burst like tiny depth charges on the face of the water. Though it was hard to tell at this distance, I was fairly certain that one could look into this spring and see straight down into the earth – down to places the light was scared to reach.

Fascinating as all this was, I began to frantically search for any sign of an exit. Though there was comparatively little shoreline to get around, a bevy of obstacles kept me from simply skirting about the pond and climbing up to the other side of the cave. For one, the pipelines rising from the springs hemmed me in on both sides, too large and probably too hot to climb over. Here and there, both pipelines grew a number of smaller brass flanges and flagella, each tipped with valve wheels and gauges like primitive, robotic eyeballs. Up close, this gave the zig-zags of pipeline the look of gigantic alien centipedes. Beyond the pipes were forbidding slopes and folds of malformed cave rock. If these led to more hospitable portions of the theoretical Frisbee, I had no idea.

"Hahahaha . . ."

The sound floated through the depths of the grotto like a wraith at play. Though I knew well enough which direction it originated from, the noise of Elkan Fir-Bulbin's laughter slid and shimmied along every curved surface. It resounded back at me from the opposite shore of the lake and capered about my sides.

I can't really call what I felt as I turned around "terror." Terror, like all forms of fear, is a polarizing sensation. It encourages action. I think my body was done with such formalities. Now, as I turned and faced up the uneven slope to the cavern's entrance, all I felt was a species of numbness, as if I had recently ingested some powerful opiate. I disliked the feeling intensely.

Yrbor ambled through the fog-ridden shadows, carefully picking his way down the slippery stone that flowed down to the bottom of the grotto. The wolfos shrugged and twitched, making gruff whining noises as it came. The way he shook his eyes back and forth as he walked made it clear that the animal disliked this new environment to the point of rebelliousness.

Elkan, on the other hand, was clearly having the time of his life. He looked over the breadth of the cavern appreciatively. "The caldera springs," he intoned. "When the gorons excavated these caves, they were looking for precious jewels. Who knew that these little pools would be even more lucrative?"

They were no more than thirty yards away. Coming slowly, yes, but even a careful hike wouldn't take long to close the distance. I twisted and turned and shuffled in an awkward, foot-burning circle, looking with renewed vigor for something, some way, that would get me out of this place. To the sides were the bulging walls of pipeline. To my back was the bubbling, bottomless spring.

My heart slammed itself against my ribs; my stomach shrank into a sour little peach pit.

Back up on the slope, Elkan reined in his mount and smiled. "Nothing to say?" the moblin said. He huffed a gout of scorching air into his hoggish snout. Steam whirled visibly about his head. "This is the end of your path, Hero. No more exits. No more little passageways to scurry down. Just you and I and these slick rock walls. Just you and I and the yawn of the abyss."

I puffed and wheezed and felt the air claw at my lungs like moist little demon's talons.

Spurs met skin. Yrbor snarled and jumped vertical, then resumed his laborious descent.

I stared down the approaching duo, feeling the heat like hatred through the flesh of my toes. Some part of me knew that the soles of my feet were burning, slowly cooking like bacon on a camp griddle. That part of me – let's call it "self preservation" – was being smothered by something much more intense and fast and satisfying: Rage.

Rage, borne of my helplessness. Rage,rising from my humiliation, my pain, my fecklessness. Rage like a cold rainstorm. Rage as wonderful and liberating as a dose of pure adrenaline. Rage like lightning.

Elkan and Yrbor reached the floor of the grotto, approaching my position at a languid, sweat-dripping canter. The expression of pleasure on Elkan's face was insurmountable. "Make me a deal, Hero!" he cackled. "Beg! Offer me my heart's desire! I swear – that is my _absolute _favorite part of all this. The groveling. That last, pathetic blubbering before they piss themselves and I eviscerate them!"

Such rage.

God, it felt good to feel something again.

I lifted the Master Sword. I planted my left foot. I wrapped my fingers around the hilt of the sword in one last death grip. I felt my lips roll back from my teeth.

"Come on, then," I snarled. "Come the fuck on! There ain't no pity in this city!"

Elkan chuckled. "Ah, Hero. So unfortunate that it has to end like this. I think that, given enough time, I really could have made something of you."

Endless tentacles of hot mist coiled and slithered about us. The spring murmured idiotically. The pump-house thudded and spun and ejected whitish geysers of foul-smelling steam. We each stared into the other's eyes, blue on gray, and watched as veins pulsed in the hollows of our temples. We tensed and blinked and made ready.

"Goodbye," Elkan said.

And then he and Yrbor were gone. In their place was a single blurred shape – a smash of dull color sliding between the pillows of steam. A crush of movement so fast I couldn't follow it. A smear of gray muscle in the dark.

They slid to stop a few feet to my left, still moving as a single hideous entity. I had just enough time to flinch, and then Elkan swung the halberd with both hands. The ambient steam split and billowed about the arc of its descent.

Jesus, I thought. So much for –

The flat of the blade caught me in the right arm, twisting my entire body in the opposite direction. My feet corkscrewed off the floor. My arms helicoptered limply at my sides. The cavern whirled about me as if caught in a tornado.

My body landed like a rag doll, all muddled limbs and flailing head. The Master Sword flew from my hands, twirled twice through the air, and clanged impotently against the ground some fifteen feet away.

I may have passed out for a moment, though I can't be sure. I do know that when I lifted my face to the cavern ceiling, the movement came with an instant of wretched, nauseating disorientation. Did I fall?, I wondered. Am I hurt?

I barely felt the pain now. This was shock finally setting in – though I didn't realize that until it was too late. That energizing, exhilarating anger had vanished in a puff of red-tinged steam and angled metal. It felt like a dream dissipating the instant of awakening.

Oh God, I thought. My sword. Gotta get my sword back. I'm dead if I don't get that fucking sword back.

I tried to lift myself up and felt something like a shower of nails run through my back and shoulders. I faltered. A peal of keen laughter stabbed at my ears. When I managed to stand, my eyesight went dim as I beheld the outline of Yrbor's jaws, not three feet from my face. A jet of carrion breath ruffled my hair. The creature's teeth looked like spikes of polished yellow rock.

"Kyah!"

Elkan swooped in from above. He spun the halberd as expertly and effortlessly as a drum major might spin a baton. The blonde wood of its shaft impacted my solar plexus, solid as a steel pipe, and drove the breath from me in a spray of spittle. I fell at a canted angle, knees crashing into the floor. The twinkling volcanic bedrock skimmed the top layer of skin off my kneecaps with the ease of a cheese grater.

The next breath I took tasted like blood, burnt hair, and matchsticks. All the colors and angles of the world went muddy. The cavern, and Elkan looming through it, became a stippled painting in an unknown style. I barely felt my chest and cheek hit the floor.

"Gods, do stand up at least," Elkan droned. He sounded like was speaking from the other end of a tin-can telephone.

My arm snaked out and gripped a bulge of rock. An anemic bicep strained. Thighs and calves and weak abdominals flexed. I dragged myself over the burning floor, the fallen Master Sword locked in the center of my line of sight.

"Get up."

I made a wet, unflattering sound. With my left hand, I tremblingly raised my middle finger behind me. With my right, I pulled my useless body another few feet.

"GET UP!" Elkan howled. "DON'T MAKE ME STAB YOU IN THE SPINE, HERO!"

Weirdly, I obliged him. I managed to heave myself into a bow-legged crouch. The sword was just a few feet away now – just a few feet and I could fight – fight like I did against those mounted moblin fucks –

The Master Sword vanished behind a wall of gray skin, jagged teeth, and bristling little hairs. Above the curve of Yrbor's body, Elkan peered down with the eyes of an overseer. He wasn't smiling anymore. Something about my lack of resistance – my pitiful inability to fight back – had displeased him.

The leather of his gloves tightened about the shaft of his halberd with a crinkling sound.

There came a shout. It was low and far-off at first. Like Elkan's laughter, it obviously came from behind us, beyond the entrance to the pumping grotto – yet it echoed like an arcane whisper about the malformed bowl of the cavern walls. It grew quickly, finally resolving itself into a single repeated word:

"Brother!"

Elkan's gaze twitched upward. Annoyance and frustration bunched up across his face.

I heard bootsteps, heavy and clonking and careless.

"BROTHER!"

I turned my own attention up the cave's slope, along the snaking lines of the monster pipes. Up amid the churning vapor and phantom lamplight, a squat form dashed. It came down the slope at a frenzied pace, waving its arms and gesturing emptily. "Brother! Fahd! Fahd kah tuk! Make haste!"

White hair streamed behind the newcomer's head. His eyes were wild and his tusks gleamed like marble in the dim refraction of the steam clouds. He held a blood-dotted rapier loosely in one hand.

Karrik.

Oh fuck me, I thought. Another prancing, useless, venomous jester-voice exclaimed, This is one hell of a boss fight!

Elkan grimaced and threw me a sour look that clearly said, _Don't move. I'll be right back. _He urged Yrbor about, facing Karrik as he tore ass toward us.

"Brother!" Karrik yelled. "Brother, it is of vital importance that –"

"Back!" Elkan suddenly screamed. "This is my joy – my kill!

The younger moblin stopped dead in his tracks. He panted in the sudden heat, gray sweat soaking his fine clothes. When he looked at me, it was with a confused mélange of hatred, curiosity, and outright bewilderment.

"You have him?" Karrik grunted. "Amrak met, Fir. Why not –?"

"Do you have any conception of who this man _is_?" Elkan barked. "Do you have any idea of what we need to _do _to him? How badly we have to break him before we display his body before the Hylians?"

My head swung as if it were on an overly oiled pivot. I looked toward the edge of the simmering pond. My eyes slid over the shoreline, and I wondered if it was even remotely possible to swim across the circle of steaming water.

"What are you talking about?" Karrik whined. "Whatever mad gohma has crawled into your head, you need to take leave of it and –"

It seemed that Elkan was not in the mood to let his brother finish even a single statement. He interrupted with a heaving, baritone growl. "Watch your tone! I am your commander! I will do with this man as I like!"

I traced the shoreline, over to where the massive pipeline snaking to the left came about the lake's edge. For a moment, I thought what I saw was a trick of the light. About fifteen feet from the lip of the spring, under one of the protruding clusters of knobs and valves, was a divot in the cavern floor. At first, I thought this little cleft in the rock was just a dead-end hole to nowhere. As the light shifted with the flow of ambient steam, I realized that this wasn't the case: This shallow pit ran _under_ the pipeline, forming a very narrow and extremely cramped trench that ran from one side of the barrier to the other.

Elsewhere (at that moment, it seemed a continent away), Karrik said, "Brother, we have to fly. The town's militia has broken through the stockade. They have control of the upper floors! We can't be captured by these palebelly scum. Finish this quickly!"

There was no calculation on my part. No inhalation or moment taken to steel myself. I just bolted then, hobbling like an escapee from a concentration camp, and headed straight for the crawlspace under the pipeline.

"ELKAN!" Karrik's voice came from another planet. Another galaxy.

"Hmph. I see him," Elkan grumbled. "There's nowhere to run here. Nowhere to run _to_. Time to finish this."

I reached the edge of the pipeline. It pulsed waves of heat that made my hair feel brittle against my itching skin. I flopped to the ground and tried to figure out the fastest (not necessarily the best) way to shimmy into the space below the pipe. Up this close, I saw that much less space separated the floor of the depression and the bottom of the pipe. Not promising at all.

I chanced a look back over my shoulder. I don't know why I took that precious second to do something so stupid and pointless.

All I know is that that glance saved my life.

Across the floor of the grotto, Elkan pulled a reluctant Yrbor in my direction. The moblin wiped sweat from his forehead. He flashed me a glittering _fuck you_ of a sneer. "Bite his head off, Yrbor," he rumbled.

The wolfos charged.

Every organ in my body joined my stomach in shrinking into odious little pebbles.

Yrbor bounded like a fox around the stump of a stalagmite. He leapt over a fold of rock. Every muscle in the wolfos's body rippled and he pounced straight at me, maw open wide and claws outstretched.

Like the idol of a jolly and terrible god, Elkan Fir-Bulbin spread his arms and raised his halberd in triumph.

When it happened, I didn't really see the _how _of it. I didn't understand what had happened for almost a full second after. That delay in comprehension made it feel like I was watching the whole, twisted panorama as if in slow-motion replay.

As Yrbor arced through the air like a living missile, I fell backward. It was a spastic, embarrassing plop straight onto my back, with my ass cantilevered beneath me like the world's worst fulcrum. To this day, I'm not certain if that graceless movement is what caused the bizarre result of Yrbor's fateful leap. Perhaps my flop backward caused the wolfos to miscalculate. Perhaps the jump had been doomed from its inception.

Such idle speculation is unimportant, of course. The outcome was all that mattered.

Yrbor's front talons passed over my head and instead struck the grove of copper branches – those valves and wheels and gauges – protruding from the curve of pipeline. As I watched in dumbfounded amazement, the colossal animal bunched up on itself like a dropped accordion. The wolfos, up to this point so horribly graceful that it was like an apparition, proceeded to flip over the piping and twist pitifully through the air. Its momentum carried it and Elkan past me and out toward the lakeshore.

I lost sight of Elkan until Yrbor slammed into bedrock. The wolfos continued to roll. Elkan had lost his halberd in flight, and now flailed impotently in an attempt to stay on his careening mount. His hands slipped from the reins; his boots found no purchase in the stirrups; and at once his entire body sailed through the air, away from Yrbor. His greatcoat flowed behind him like a cape.

Yrbor came to a rest just feet from the edge of the volcanic spring.

Elkan silently flew past. There was an almost uncannily loud splash as he fell through heavy curtains of steam and crashed into the pond. Perfect blue water became a white tumult, which quickly subsided into a series of perturbed ripples. Then, for what seemed like a crystalline eternity, the spot where Elkan had landed regained its glassy composure.

Truthfully, no more than ten seconds passed. Probably less than that.

Then, that jeweled surface shattered. A dark shape burst up from the depths of the spring in a cloud of foam and sulfur-reeking steam. I saw a hand, a glint of smooth leather, the silhouette of a head.

Short as it was, the scream that followed was, up to that point, the worst sound I had ever heard.

Later, I would learn that the water that rose from Oloro Town's magmatic depths was not, strictly speaking, _water_. Oh, water was its medium, but the flawless-looking liquid bubbling at the center of that great cavern was not something one could just gather up and pour into a bathtub. Those seemingly unending systems of pipelines, storage tanks, valves, and cisterns filling the maintenance levels were not just for show. The open hot springs were actually deceptive cauldrons of dissolved minerals – caldera-pumped chemical mixtures of heavy metals, sublimated gases, and molar cocktails of subterranean compounds.

This is all to say that the liquid that surfaced within the pumping grotto had an almost apocalyptically higher boiling point than pure water. Though it looked inviting as a hot tub, burbling almost peacefully in its stone basin, that pool was probably close to two hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit.

The sound that erupted from Elkan Fir-Bulbin's splitting, curling lips began as a roar of pain. Then – as his vocal chords cooked in his throat – it melted into a high, gargling shriek. It was a noise unlike anything I had ever heard. A man's voice running like flaming tallow, transforming into a child's scream, and then pooling into something so liquid, eldritch, and indefinable that I still hear it in nightmares.

The sound ended, mercifully, as his larynx split open like a sausage casing.

The thing that popped up through the surface of the subterranean lake resembled Elkan only in the broad details. There were clean white teeth and the vague suggestion of hair shorn in a military style. I saw the gold of the braid on his coat's shoulders.

What little of Elkan's skin that wasn't bubbling up in massive, hemorrhagic blisters was actively flowing off the muscle beneath. I could see the tendons connecting his jaw to his skull, stretching like white strings of plastic cord. His ears were nubs of black tar. His tongue protruded between his teeth like a slab of gray meat.

His eyes were irregular, dead-white blobs – boiled in their sockets. As I watched, one of them split open like a soap bubble and something the color and consistency of meringue oozed out over Elkan's cheek.

"Oh _gods _oh Ganon oh gods _ELKAN_!"

The tromp of boots.

I watched as Elkan's arms pumped and clawed furiously through the pond. Holy fucking shit, I thought. He's trying to swim out. He's still alive. _He's still alive_!

The air was so full of steam now that I barely saw Karrik race past me and kneel at the pond's edge. As I watched the younger brother reach out painfully, gabbling in his clicking moblin tongue, I sniffed. The heavy wet air tickled at my nostrils. Along with the omnipresent stink of brimstone and heavy metals, a new scent had joined the mix. Something thick and juicy and redolent with fat.

Dear sweet Jesus, I knew that smell.

Carnitas.

Mexican food. The whole cavern smelled like fucking Mexican food. My petrified stomach lurched. I felt saliva pool beneath my tongue, turning sour and brassy.

Elkan's twitching, gurgling form floated closer to the edge of the pond. Tears streaming down his face, Karrik bent down and took hold of his brother's outstretched arm. I heard Karrik's skin hiss as it made contact with the leather of Elkan's coat. Karrik heaved backward.

There was a greasy, gut-crushing _pop._

Suddenly, Karrik lay on the ground with a befuddled look on his face. Beside him, steam unwrapping from it in jaunty ribbons, was Elkan's leather greatcoat. From this angle, I could see the swollen, gloved hand at the end of one of the coat's sleeves.

Elkan still bobbed in the water. He had gone silent and still.

Karrik blinked. I blinked. The moblin raider stood unsteadily, still blinking, still silently crying, and picked up his brother's coat from the floor. As if it were a chunk of rotten fruit falling out of a blackened peel, the jellied remains of Elkan's arm slid out of the coat's sleeve. It landed on the floor with a moist _splud_.

With a sizzling slurp, the rest of Elkan Fir-Bulbin's corpse sank back beneath the surface of the lake.

Karrik looked at the coat in his hand. He looked at the arm on the floor – the arm that he had yanked from the socket of his brother's shoulder like the leg of a roasted chicken. He croaked something a moblin word or phrase, even more incomprehensible through a layer of snot and tears.

Looking stunned and disoriented, Yrbor tentatively stepped into view. The wolfos emitted a quizzical, "Wuff," and sniffed hard at the smoking coat in Karrik's hands.

Karrik looked back down at his brother's arm, then at me, then at the arm. His expression had gone flat and blank as a slab of granite.

I stared.

"I didn't . . ." The words slid from my lips. "I didn't _mean_ . . ."

I stared and felt a horror unlike anything I had ever experienced in the entirety of my life. It struck me like a blow. I reeled with it. It surrounded me, pressing in like quicksand – suffocating, drowning, implacable. The colors washed from my vision and a hideous buzzing filled my ears. Ten thousand hot maggots squirmed across my skin. My hands opened and closed and opened and closed and each time they did, my nails dug into the flesh of my palms.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to scream and pull at my hair and claw red furrows into my forearms.

Instead, I bent double, convulsed, and vomited. Tasted salt and felt stray strings of hard beef brush against my teeth. I vomited again. Tasted the bitter tang of bile and felt the burn of hot acid in the back of my throat. I tried to open my eyes, saw nothing but a mess of shapes and dull colors, and vomited again. This time, barely anything came up. Bile spattered from my lips and dripped over my chin.

When I pulled myself back up into a sitting position, my chest ached and tears seeped from the corners of my eyes. I tried to stand, but my arms and legs felt atrophied. Strength – the very concept of it, it seemed – had vanished along with Elkan Fir-Bulbin's body as it disappeared below the roiling water. I settled for raising my head, the joints in my neck popping painfully as I did.

I didn't know what I expected to see. What I hadn't expected – at all – was emptiness. I let out an involuntary noise that was part sigh and part groan. Both Karrik and Yrbor were gone.


	17. 17

**17**

I crouched on my knees for what felt like a very long time. I did little but stare at the red hooks of my fingers and the striations in the rock floor. Every time I caught a whiff of the pulled-pork smell that swam through the air, I heaved and heaved despite there being nothing in my stomach to expel.

The grotto was not a healthy place to linger. The heat of the place had crowded in and taken hold of my chest, squeezing tighter and tighter. My skinned knees throbbed against the uneven, baking stone.

My feet buzzed with slowly amplifying, burnt pain. The one good thing about staying in this position was that it gave my soles just a little bit of relief from the radiating bite of the floor. Of course, this also meant that my knees and calves were now growing red and angry.

_Tromp, clomp; clomp, tromp. _I heard jingling noise, like a mess of keys muffled in a pants pocket. Heavy footsteps, resonating off the walls like the arrival of a careless ghost.

"Hello?" a clipped voice called out, echoing against the uneven walls of the cavern.

Oh God, I thought. He's back. Karrik's come back to finish the job.

"Oy! Hello?!"

It occurred to me that it was _not _Karrik. Not at all. The voice was so unfamiliar that it may as well have come from a robot.

I raised my head.

On the slope leading up to the grotto's entrance stood a broad, squat man holding what looked to be a short spear in one hand. No – not a man. Wide, blank, black eyes. A nearly featureless face. Goron.

"Oh. Hey," I said.

Far away as he was, I doubt that he heard me. All the same, the goron began to cautiously make his way toward the bottom of the cavern. He was a weird-looking little runt – and really, at that moment, I wasn't even sure that the goron _was _a "he." The jangling noise that I had heard was a ringmail vest, worn by the goron beneath a heavy yellow surcoat. A perfunctory-looking leather helmet sat on top of the goron's head. His skin (or carapace or whatever the hell it was) was the color of chewing tobacco.

"Oy!" he shouted as he scrabbled across the cave embankment. "You ain't allowed in here, son! It's dangerous!"

My throat produced a morbid, involuntary giggle. "You don't have to tell me twice," I said.

"What? Can't hear you, mate. Wait a –"

I hooked a thumb over my shoulder, pointing it vaguely in the direction of the volcanic pool.

Despite my admittedly feeble attempt to lay out the situation, the goron clearly didn't understand what had happened. When he reached the floor of the grotto, he groused, "Oy, lad, you got to be leavin'. You may have thought it were a good idea to hide down here, but it ain't safe at all." He took one of those strange, whistling goron breaths. "Not only is this place goin' to cook you like a gohma in its shell, but I know those mob bastards were down here, too. I just saw one of 'em on his wolfos, runnin' for it through the halls."

"Karrik," I said.

"What's that?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Well, it's all over now, lad. We took this place back. The raid's done an' over with. We won! You can come upstairs an' stop hidin'." A peculiar species of concern crept into the goron's voice. He smiled in a manner that I could only interpret as "wan." "Oy now. It's all goin' to be all right. I see you're scared. You've had a bad time of it, eh? But it's over now. Let's get you back upstairs and to your folk."

"He fell in," I said flatly.

The somewhat commiserating look on the goron's face vanished. After a beat of naked confusion, he clicked, "What?"

I laughed. Again. The sound of it wavered and cracked, full of obvious mania. When I twisted around to point at the lake, the cut on my side stung at me as if fresh. New blood rolled down my torso and dripped onto the rock at my knees.

A glistening, ragged shadow bobbed just below the surface of the water. Torn bits of clothing and chunks of flesh floated through the pond. An oily sheen surrounded the dead moblin like a sepulchral halo. Plumes of richly scented steam billowed into the air from the spot where Elkan had met his premature end. The smell had taken on a watery, stewish quality that reminded me of hot and sour soup.

Even as the goron watched, I attempted to throw up again. Naturally, nothing came up.

For a few moments, the goron continued to simply blink, each click of the eyelids coming closer and closer together. Finally, he croaked, "Din n' Farore. They threw some poor bastard in there, didn't they?" The corners of the goron's mouth stretched out thinly, in what could only be an expression of horror or disgust.

I shook my head laconically. "Nope. Nope nope. Not one of ours. Ha – 'ours.' That's Elkan cooking away in there. Had himself a little accident."

"Who?"

"Elkan Fir-Bulbin, man," I grinned. "Their commander."

"Oxshit," the goron mumbled. "Why would the commander o' the Southern Raiders . . ." He trailed off, still staring at the grotesquerie floating in the spring.

Shrugging, I said, "I guess I pissed them off. He chased me down here, beat the shit out of me a little, and then – whoops! – he got his dumb ass killed." Another machinegun burst of giggles escaped me. My eyelids fluttered and my body wobbled.

"Are you tellin' me you killed Elkan Fir-Bulbin, lad? The worst scum to ever ride the plains o' Eldin?"

Another shrug; another unpleasant bubble of laughter. "I guess?"

"Din!" the goron exclaimed. He looked at me squarely, the disbelief and astonishment obvious even on his alien face. "_Din_! Mothers of all, lad! What in the name of all that's holy did you _do_?"

"Not much," I said. "Not much at all." I licked my lips and flicked a drifting hair away from my eyes. "Do you mind helping me up? I'm kinda in a bad way here."

Something new came over the goron then. There was a hardening of his features – a setting of the angles and corners of his blocky face. His mouth became a two-dimensional black line. At the time, I thought it might have been an expression of determination or stoicism.

Later, I would learn that it was a common goron expression of fear.

His strange, cool hand cupped my unburnt shoulder and moved to haul me up. I grimaced with pain, hissed high and wretched, and stood. As soon as my weight settled on my feet, their soles began to sing bright, clear songs in the key of agony. The pain pulsed and throbbed, up through my feet and into my ankles. It shot like cracked lances of lightning through my calves. I shouted something meaningless and almost fell over.

The goron leaned into me, holding me up with a steady arm. "Easy, lad," he clucked. He looked back out at the spring and its abominable contents. "Farore help us," he whispered. "We'll be a bleeding month cleaning this one out. Gods, there'll be bits of 'em up in the feed pipes already. Have to shut down the whole place for a couple days just to make sure nobody ends up with mob parts in their bathwater." He made a frustrated clacking sound. "Did ya' really have to do him in that way?"

"Sorry," I said. I attempted to steady myself, even though pain continued to thunder through my feet. "I didn't plan it. It just happened. Sorry."

"Don't matter, I guess," the goron sighed. "We really should be goin', lad. I got to join up with the rest o' my boys and make sure all the basements are clear o' bok trash."

I tried to take a step away from my living anchor, winced, and fell back shakily. "I'm not sure I can walk," I whimpered.

Features still frozen, the goron said, "You can stand all right. Ain't that far out of here."

"Can you at least help me out of _this _place?" I asked. "My fucking feet . . . hurt real bad."

"Fine," the goron said. "Let's go, then."

"Wait."

Impatiently: "What now?"

"Need my sword. I dropped it." I pointed across the grotto floor, to where the Master Sword waited, shining like a beacon from a gentler age.

"All right then," my goron pal grunted. He sounded like this was all an intolerable chore.

I swayed and stared blankly as he ambled over to the Master Sword's resting place. When he picked it up, he paused and looked over the old weapon with stiff curiosity. What conclusions he gleaned from that brief inspection, I'll never know. I barely noticed when he placed the Master Sword in my hand and then, sighing, closed my fingers around its hilt with his own. Once I had a grip on it, I resolved not to let go of that sword ever again.

The goron led me up the embankment as best he could, God bless him. The pain reverberating from my feet receded into a kind of unpleasant-but-bearable background noise.

When we emerged into the beyond the grotto, it felt we entered a new and alien country. I leaned into the scratchy wool of the goron's surcoat. "Oh, _wow_," I murmured.

"Right, son," my guide chuffed. "This is where we part ways."

"Do you have to? I don't . . . well, I don't think I'll make it."

The goron grunted, "You'll be fine. Your feet ain't so bad as ya' think. May be burned pretty good, but you can walk just fine."

Says the guy with nice solid boots on, I thought. "But – wait. Wait. I don't know the way out."

"You made it down here, didn't ya'? Didn't you notice where you were goin'?"

"I was a little busy running for my life," I said testily.

"Fair enough," the goron sighed. He let go of me and took a tentative step back, as if expecting me to keel over at any moment. "It actually ain't hard to get out. Just follow the signs."

I made a whipped puppy sort of noise. "I can't," I coughed, "I can't read."

He tipped back on his heels and clacked, "Oh, Din n' Nayru, son. Goddesses above. Just," it was his turn to sputter awkwardly, "just follow the pipes." He proceeded to relay a complicated series of directions that I ceased hearing after the first mention of "flapper valve." I stared into the spaces between rock molecules and imagined oceans of aloe vera cream.

The goron clapped me on the shoulder with his free hand. "Then it's straight up the stairs to the first floor. You got all that?"

I gawped at him and said nothing.

"Right! Well . . . lad. I'll let you . . ." he blinked nervously. "Hrm. Right ho, then. Let you be. You'll do fine."

With that, the goron guardsman all but ran down the corridor away from me. He threw one last, inscrutable glance over his shoulder. Something like panic stitched together his features. The goron hurried on his way.

"Hey. Hey!" I called after him. "At least get me a fuckin' towel!"

Fruitless. He had already disappeared through the pale curtains of steam. I was alone, abandoned again in the rank belly of the earth. The Master Sword swayed lazily from my hand, as if I were using it to dowse. I smacked my lips and listened to the gurgle of water through pipes and the growling, rancid emptiness of my stomach.

When I tried to play back the guard's directions, I only heard jargon-laden gibberish. I may as well have gotten the advice in Tlingit.

"Fuck it," I mumbled and set off down the hallway.

I don't remember much about the walk up out of the undercrofts of the Oloro bathhouse. Pipes, pools, pain. A mumbly chanting suffused the tunnels, like the whispers of incorporeal madmen. At some point, I realized that the mutterings were my own – a subconscious attempt to replay the goron's instructions out loud.

Though it couldn't have been long, I don't know how much time it took me. It seemed to stretch forever and to take no time at all. I may have gotten lost a couple of times.

I only remember encountering two major landmarks. The first was the carpet-lined, chilly little office. I stopped there briefly, luxuriating in the cool air and quiet.

The second benchmark of my progress came shortly after: The bokoblin that Ingo had axed in the face. It still lay twisted in the middle of the maintenance corridor, looking like a particularly morbid, discarded puppet. When I reached this reminder of good times gone by, I knew that I only had to follow the subsequent hallway to reach the surface. I paused and stood over the corpse impassively. I looked through the ragged gash in the creature's forehead and into the pink and gray porridge that passed for its brains. A malign titter escaped my pursed lips.

From there, I followed the dimly remembered directions Ingo had given me. Through a winding length of hot corridor; past red-lit cubicles marked with warning signs; between the judgmental towers of standing water pipes; onto a tiled landing; up a flight of narrow, well-worn stairs. I went through a door and found myself in a quiet, stucco-walled hallway.

Scene missing. I think I traveled down the hall's length. Another scene missing. Up ahead was a heavy red curtain. I shimmied beneath it. One last scene missing. I found myself in a wet, dark junction. To my right was another door, half-open and leading into a cavernous, dripping space. Where the hell was I?

Before me, down a short hall lined with benches, was a pair of heavy doors. One of them stood slightly ajar, allowing a sliver of light and sound into the junction. A garbled din slipped between the doors and resonated in the narrow chamber. Voices. Some hushed; others, all but shouting. A disembodied mob, jabbering about the white walls and whispering through the rafters.

I pressed my body against the door. It fell open ponderously, with a leaden shriek. My eyes twitched and ached with the radiance that fell through the opening.

I limped into the light.

It must have been a terrible apparition indeed that came through those doors. A stumbling, blood-covered wreck, ancient sword swinging at its side and strings of filthy hair covering its bloodshot eyes. Its steps were weak and halting; its shoulders were slumped and shaking; its cracked lips were parted in a lurid grimace.

So, it came as no surprise that all those voices stopped as I walked into the lobby of the Oloro Bathhouse. There were gasps and oaths, a ripple of spoken bewilderment, and then all conversation turned to silence. I felt eyes upon me.

To my right was the marble front desk of the bathhouse, now empty and unmanned. Out in the open center of the lobby was a motley, milling throng of dozens of people. Most were bathers or bath attendants, robes and hastily donned clothes clinging to their damp bodies. Among them were city guardsmen dressed in surcoats and mail, looking exhausted and irritable. The air reeked of anxiety and confusion – that sour, angry odor that tends collects over any tightly packed, stationary crowd. There had to be nearly fifty people – Hylians and gorons alike – jammed into that space.

Every single one of them had turned my way as I entered the room.

Though it had been a loose galaxy of babbling, free-flowing conversations on my entry, the crowd now formed a kind of involuntary defensive perimeter. Men stepped backward. Groups huddled close and people seemed to shrink in on themselves. A definite frontier formed between me and the people gathered about the lobby.

I recognized some of them: There was the pair of teenagers that I had interrupted probably mid-coitus; looking both forlorn and strangely happy was the spindly old woman in the green robe I had crossed paths with while looking for my own bath; across the way stood the attendant goron who had handed Tash his tokens, looking bedraggled.

Ingo stood at the periphery of the mob, hair still wild and blood-spackled axe still in hand. Vague amusement twisted his lips. When his coal-dark eyes turned on me, I think I detected in them the first surprise I had yet seen in the man. Next to him slouched Mohan Smythe, clearly worse for the wear. He had a black eye, a bloodied nose, and one of his cheeks was red and swollen. Nonetheless, when he caught sight of me, he grinned exuberantly.

No one moved. No one spoke. They all simply stared, slack-jawed and startled and seemingly uncomprehending. The last few conversations between those in the back, who hadn't seen me enter, finally trailed off into muddled quiet.

I raised a hand. "Sup."

Out in the gaggle of faces, someone coughed.

Smythe was the first to speak. "Lad! You made it!" He clapped his hands delightedly, and the noise began again in earnest.

The lobby filled with panoply shouts, entreaties, whispers, wisecracks, questions, grunts, cries, asides, declarations, and oaths. Ingo mouthed something that may have been an obscenity aimed at my mother.

"– think I hear – is that . . ." A bright, harried voice resolved itself from the chaos. I watched as a willowy form – followed by another, rounder one – pushed its way between the babbling mass. "Linus?! Is that – Linus!"

Malora Lon shoved her way out past the front of the mob. Behind her came her father, whispering apologies to the scowling men and women and gorons that Malora had elbowed out of the way. Tash looked damp and confused. Malora, on the other hand, was a careening ball of worry and panic. Her cheeks were flushed and drops of moisture – whether sweat or bathwater, I didn't know – stood out all over her skin. Wet curls of arterial-red hair were plastered across her forehead. Her eyes were as clear and bright as the sky after a rainstorm.

I smiled dopily and once again raised my hand in greeting. "Oh. Hey. Malora. Tash. Cool."

Malora grinned and weakly returned the gesture. Beside her, Tash blinked, shook his head, and then blew out a sputtery, lip-flapping breath.

With the Lons' arrival, the crowd's gaze seemed to settle on me even more forcefully. As quickly as it had erupted, the storm of voices subsided into a babble and then a quiet chattering and then died altogether. There followed a cough, another whispered oath, and a backscattered under-chorus of barely stifled giggles.

I glanced down.

Ah.

It had finally sunken in that I was, in point of fact, stark fucking naked. A fact that had actually slipped_ my _mind, as well. Now I knew the intense, incomparable sensation of dozens of people staring at my junk.

"Oh. Oh shit."

Despite the blood loss and shock and scorched feet and blistered shoulder, I felt my cheeks and forehead flush. As my right hand still gripped the Master Sword, I awkwardly swept my left out and cupped it pathetically over my groin. It was spastic, blind movement. Effective, though: Quite frankly, my genitals were so shrunken with pain and stress that it felt like I could have concealed them under a shot glass.

Out in the crowd: Eyes became billiard balls. Jaws came unhinged. Malora gasped aloud. A shaking hand shot to her lips.

Um.

My mouth moved, but no sound came out. An inhalation, then: "What?"

The only reply I got came by way of wet blinks and astonished faces. Even Tash and Mohan Smythe gazed at me with stunned expressions, as if I had just sprouted wings and a third eye.

Ingo grimaced and shuffled away from the crowd, his limp stiffer and more pronounced as his sandaled feet moved across the slick floor. He raised an index finger gnarled with calluses and pointed to me.

"Lad . . . is that what Ingo thinks it is?" he wheezed.

Another quick glance. As out of it as I was, I still marvel at how long it took for me to figure it out. When I did, I felt a rush of numbness burst from the crown of my head and, like a freezing rain, pour all the way down to the balls of my feet.

Oh, you bloody dumb fucker, the Other Me rasped. You inconceivably stupid piece of shit.

When my left hand had darted out to hide my shriveled junk, I had made a terrible mistake: In the careless moment of the gesture, I had all but shown off my tattoo like a prize trophy.

Granted, walking into this room naked had been the first and most foolish error in judgment. This, then, was proof that there's always a way to compound things.

_After all, they don't honor their bodies like the goddesses command. They pierce themselves! Earrings and even things through those big ugly noses of theirs!_

Malora's eyes glistened. I realized that they were rimmed with tears.

_They even give themselves_ tattoos_! Isn't that awful?!_

It wasn't that hard to imagine what they were all thinking, as I stood there naked and stunned and silent. A tattoo. A tattoo, exposed in a chamber full of people who apparently thought that even earrings were blasphemous. A tattoo of their most sacred symbol, etched into my flesh like an eternal taunt.

"I . . . I don't," I managed. "This. This isn't what it . . ." My words trailed off, choking as my throat quivered.

Among the assembled onlookers, a quavering male voice murmured, "His sword . . ."

"Aye," chimed another. I realized with a start that it was Tash Lon, murmuring in agreement. His face was as grave as a death mask. "There's that, too."

Ingo nodded slowly – in response to Tash or to some internal epiphany, I'll never know. The accusing finger dropped. I noticed that his eyes kept flitting between the tattoo on my arm and the sword gripped in my hand hesitatingly, as if what he saw in their interplay was intensely disturbing. He licked his lips, shuddered, and said, "That sword o' yours. Ingo never got a good look at it out on the plains or down in that there basement. Now he's got a grand ol' view, he does." Ingo looked over his shoulder, as if to confirm that he still had a crowd of believers at his back. I saw his wiry fingers tighten over the wood of his axe handle. "No smith in Hyrule would forge a sword like that, lad. No fellow would shape the sign o' the goddesses in mere steel. Tell Ingo – where'd you get that there weapon?"

So: This was it. The moment when the scales fell from every eye. The moment when all my fraud and evasions were laid bare.

An outsider had come amongst these people, strange of speech and custom, and despite their misgivings, they had welcomed him the best they could. Now he stood revealed: A fraud, a trickster, a killer, and a heretic. A perpetrator of outrages so foul that they barely had words to describe them.

I risked tearing my gaze away from Ingo and looked at Malora. I'm not exactly sure why I did so, though it's easy enough to guess: I wanted her to save me. I wanted her speak up for me, to explain things, to let everyone know that this was all just a huge, hilarious misunderstanding. Instead, her face remained stony and shell-shocked. Big, quiet, silvery tears slipped from Malora's eyes and flowed down the curvature of her cheeks.

"Well, lad?" Again, I was honestly startled to realize it was Tash speaking – not Ingo. The rancher took a hesitant step, wringing his palms together so tightly that they had gone dead white. His eyes pleaded me in a way his voice never could. "That sword you carry, lad. Was it the one you used when you struck down the snouts that ambushed us on the plains?"

I nodded.

Tash swallowed and then asked, "Where'd you get that sword, Linus?"

"Found it," I mumbled.

Tash's eyebrows cinched together in a single, bristling black arc. "Found it where?"

For a moment, I didn't know what to say. The answer, plain as it was, danced just beyond my reach. When it finally came to me, I hesitated some moments further, wondering if I should lie. As I realized that any lie would probably just damn me further, I settled for, "A forest."

"A what?" Ingo chuffed.

"A, a forest," I said haltingly. "Really – I mean, technically – I took it from some ruins. An old temple of some kind. About a week ago."

There were sober nods among the crowd. Looks of dark understanding. So, a thief as well as a blasphemer.

"And yonder mark? On your arm?" Tash whispered. He looked like he had some further question, but he stopped short. His mustache twitched.

I didn't answer. How could I? I looked out over that addled, bruised, angry, overwhelmed crowd and was struck dumb by the cruel absurdity of the situation. After all that I had just been through, _this _was what would end me. God – what a joke. As it turned out, I didn't even have time to formulate a response.

It was only later – when I had the luxury of actual thought – that I was able to piece together what happened next. See – people who are scared, who are in pain, who live in constant need, who fall asleep in the empty hours of the night filled with fear and anxiety . . . they tend to be desperate for miracles. There comes a point of hopelessness when one begins to perceive those miracles simply because one wants – rather, _needs_ – them to just carry on another day.

Even later, in my own empty hours, I would recall Jesus appearing in tortillas and the Virgin Mary made manifest in water stains.

Tash made an agonized, whimpering, almost childish noise.

Ingo swayed slightly on his feet.

Malora wept silently and wrapped her arms about her own midsection, trembling visibly.

The old woman in the green bathrobe had shuffled forward to the head of the crowd as Ingo and Tash interrogated me. Now, she fell to her knees. She clasped her palms. Her brows knitted and arched and she squeezed her eyes shut as if in pain.

"He is come!" the old woman moaned.

A voice like a night's breeze echoed those words from the middle of the throng. "He is . . . come . . ."

Tash Lon dropped to one knee.

The entire room seemed to let loose a single, immense sigh.

"At last!"

I didn't –

"At long last . . ."

–I didn't understand –

There came sobs, murmurs, the quick stunned susurrus of disbelief.

–what was going on and –

Someone laughed and sputtered wetly and hiccupped and laughed some more.

– and I looked about, bewildered, and saw that it was Malora who was making these last sounds –

"I knew it. _I knew it_!" she whispered.

–and I saw then that her tears were not from anger or grief or sorrow. No – the tears that poured over her reddening cheeks were of pure, unfettered _joy_.

Malora Lon dropped to her knees beside her father. Her fingers danced through the three triangles of the sign of the Triforce. With a smile that could have shattered storms, she roared:

"Long live the Hero! LONG LIVE THE HERO OF THE TRIFORCE!"

"The Hero!" the room exhaled.

"No," I said.

And every man and woman went on their knees, then. Every farmer and every merchant. Every Hylian and goron among them. They bowed their heads and traced the symbol of the Triforce through air hung salt-heavy with sweat and tears.

Their voices clamored louder and louder:

"The Hero."

"He's here! He's really –"

"The Link!"

"The Hero!"

Some rose to their feet, their voices rising with them. What once were whispers and prayers became ever-more-excited shouts and exclamations. At last, those hoarse, happy yells grew into a chant that reverberated through the chamber and rattled the hanging lamps. It pounded against the tiled fresco of the floor and whipped past the tapestries lining the walls.

"HERO! HERO! HERO! _THE HERO OF THE TRIFORCE_!"

Malora stood up, serene and grinning, wiping the last of her tears from the corners of her eyes. I had just enough time to see her mouth, _Thank you_.

"_LONG LIVE THE LINK TO THE TRIFORCE_!"

Everything crashed in on me: There was a hefty whoop, a kind of collective convulsion, and then the men and women of the crowd broke and rushed in.

"No – wait –" I stammered.

And then they were hoisting me onto their shoulders, and I knew that resistance was impossible. They swept me along, up and into glory.


	18. 18

**18**

At last, the sun settled past the walls of the valley. The sky bled orange, scarlet, purple, indigo. Stars prickled the deepening darkness. The moon arched its red eyes and silver brow up over the eastern horizon.

Down on the valley floor, black shadows pulled themselves like blankets across the fields. The roads crisscrossing the valley stood empty, the day's dust settling on their surfaces. Fruit groves trembled and swished their branches in the sweet, summer night breeze.

Lights burned in every window of Oloro Town. Voices rang through the streets. There were cheers and whoops and songs laced with joy. The laughter of children. Women sobbed and called names. A lone man keened with unmistakable and unbearable grief. Militiamen barked orders and shouted victoriously from the walls. There was a sense of something larger than any one person opening its eyes and prying paralyzed fingers from a sweat-drenched brow.

So it was as I began my first night as the Hero of the Triforce.

I initially took all this in through the windows of the third floor of the bathhouse. It was not a long, drawn-out observation – rather, I pieced it together as I stumbled along, feet aching and body numb with exhaustion. It was my first glimpse of the _scale _of what was happening and what was to come. Though I still didn't understand just how my situation was about to play out, comprehension began to grow in me as I stared into the glowing, slow-kindling bedlam of the night.

Events seemed to accelerate after the fiasco in the bathhouse lobby. Once the undulating mob grew tired of hoisting me up and carrying me about like an idol on a litter, the gathered people settled for enthusiastic arm shakes and – despite my continued nudity – almost desperate, filial embraces. Malora materialized from the churning crowd and hugged me to her body with all the open, intense gusto of someone greeting a friend long absent. When she disengaged the embrace, she flashed me that impish grin of hers and was instantly pushed aside by more exuberant well-wishers.

At long fucking last, an attendant handed me a robe. I slipped it on gratefully, letting the right sleeve dangle in the style of a posturing samurai because of my burnt shoulder. As I donned the garment, covering the Triforce on my arm, a vague sense of disappointment ran through the remaining crowd. The Freak Show portion of their evening was at an end. Though the air still simmered thick with excitement, it was clear that the arrival of the Hero had entered a new phase.

This was most evident when Mohan Smythe and Tash Lon squeezed through the wall of people surrounding me, the besuited goron desk attendant quick on their heels. Each talked over the others in a gelatinous mélange of adulation, furtive questions, and weird sorts of congratulations. Stumbling and overlapping each other, I actually heard very little of what they said.

"I've sent word!" Smythe blabbered. "Sent word to the Elder an' the commander o' the garrison."

"Ah, boyo," Tash laughed. "Who'd have known, eh? Ah, aye!" He slapped my uninjured shoulder with a hand that was supposed to be comradely, but landed like a mallet.

"Got to confess that you're a wee bit o' a sight, lad," Smythe said.

Tash nodded. "Oh, aye."

"An' you have some, errr, important folk you'll want to meet."

Nods all around, especially from the goron in the suit. When it came down to it, the three agreed heartily that I needed to get cleaned up and be ready to leave the bathhouse as soon as was comfortable.

I was given over to three goron attendants who appeared through the thinning crowd like spirits, gossamer in their white robes. All female, I guessed. One of them, whose skin was white as bleached flour, beckoned for me with a pained smile.

What else could I do but follow? After the brief, useless surge of conscious resistance following Malora's declaration, I had all but shut down. As badly as I had descended into shock after the brawl with Karrik's raiders the day before, it was nothing compared to the fugue through which I now descended. My peripheral vision crackled and I heard voices as if from a great distance. I tasted copper and sulfur and wondered dopily whether I had eaten something that had gone bad. Everything felt strange, startling, and otherworldly.

I followed the three attendants and let go of all responsibility, all thought, all reflection. I didn't even question whether it was real, as had been my wont for a day. When it came down to it, it didn't even really matter.

We ascended the stairs leading up from the lobby. The sensation of recursive déjà vu was not at all surprising. A bodiless attendant's voice told me that we were off to the upper baths for "convalescence." I nodded numbly and focused on making sure that my bare feet had purchase on the steps.

There was actually some debate as to whether I should be taken up to the fourth and top floor of the building. After a swooping whirlpool of conversation had passed between them, the gorons came to a decision: Hero or no, the top floor was reserved for patrons of noble rank. For all their firm obedience to Hyrule's social ladder (which remained alien to me then), the attendants turned and apologized profusely, almost ashamedly.

For my part, I never said a word.

So, I found myself again on the third floor of the Oloro Bathhouse, stopping awkwardly to gaze out through those massive windows and into the coalescing, manic darkness of the evening. Sharp bits of understanding began to poke through the mental vapor surrounding my brain. With them came glimpses of something lurking just beyond the threshold of my understanding, growing ever closer and more distinct: Old Friend Panic, skulking like a boggart. Just waiting to quicken my body and dull my thoughts. The fucker.

This reverie – or reveries, as I stopped a few times to get a better look out into the town – was short-lived, as my attendants prodded me along the slippery floors and out into the empty paper corridors of the bathing nooks. One of the gorons wandered off from the rest and disappeared into the maze of screens, while the others led me into an unfamiliar nook. The sight of the steaming bath in its center summoned an almost nostalgic sensation in my chest. I sighed and crossed my arms, then hissed at the sudden pulse of pain that radiated from my shoulder and chest.

The two remaining attendants disrobed me then, brazen and dispassionate as doctors. Their impassive beetle faces showed no shame or judgment. My objecting cry died before it even started. Hell, it wasn't as if these folk hadn't seen me naked before. That particular recurring nightmare was done and over with. Standing up in front of an algebra class in my underwear held no terror for me anymore. If only Hyrule could now find a way to banish my dreams of sharks, sexual rejection, and history finals.

As the attendants folded up the robe and bade me slip into the bath, the third goron scurried in holding a wooden bucket in one hand and my duffle bag in the other. Both items dropped to the floor next to the lip of the bathtub with full, satisfying _thunk_. I at last settled the Master Sword on top of the duffle, looking at it with a kind of dazed, reverent paranoia.

I was bathed. Or re-bathed, as it were. Underwater nebulae of brown and red swirled away from my body as I lowered into the tub. In deference to the minor (and in the case of my shoulder, not-so-minor) burns patching my body, the water was made lukewarm by way of handfuls of crushed ice scooped from the bucket. It seemed like such an odd extravagance that I almost protested, but the tepid water felt so amazing that I clipped off mid-syllable.

It was decidedly strange to have three people wait on me as I lathered soap across my skin and ground it into my hair. The gorons stood still and looked on with their usual stoicism, occasionally peppering me with polite questions.

"Would you like more ice?"

"How does the water treat your wounds?"

"Do you require a sponge?"

I found it rather unsettling and more than a little annoying until I first brushed the laceration on my side with a lump of soap. The acrid pain that jetted through my torso bent me double, and at once I felt gentle hands pressing into my shoulders. Quick, concerned voices urged me to breathe. The good will I felt for the three then was almost religious.

After that revelatory blast of pain, I finished bathing as quickly as possible and allowed the gorons to haul me up out of the tub. I noticed that they had laid out a large towel on the floor across from the basin, which they urged me to lie down on. I obeyed without thought. As I stared up at the distant, murky ceiling, the attendants set to the work that I suspect they were actually here to do.

They lanced the blisters on my shoulder and applied a pasty yellow salve to the burn. The ointment reeked of grease and bad tequila – hardly smells I associated with medicine – but moments after it was applied, the constant throb of the burn vanished. A cool, distant sensation settled over the afflicted flesh. When they slathered the stuff over soles of my feet, I let loose an involuntary, cathartic whimper.

As the others worked on my burns, the ashen-skinned goron probed the wound in my side gingerly and made thoughtful clucking noises deep in what passed for throat. Her big eyes blinked with the sound of paper settling on a still afternoon. She eventually crouched beside me and told me that I would need stitching up, poultices, and a good dose of the Red.

"Yeah, okay," I croaked. "Standard as a fuckin' Tylenol, I guess."

She regarded me in blank, cock-eyed silence. With a little shrug, she set back to repairing my battered body.

Everything went as advertised, rendered awfully familiar by Malora's ministrations the day before. Though I threatened to come back to full consciousness from time to time, the detachment I was experiencing from reality was wonderful for ignoring the looping bite of the goron's needle. When I dutifully swallowed the red healing elixir, the need to vomit was paltry compared to the epic session of regurgitation I had recently indulged in. The nausea was there and gone within moments, a terse but familiar caller.

Afterward, I stood shakily and obeyed the attendants' command to raise my arms. They set to rolling thick, brownish bandages about my shoulder, feet, and midsection. The strips of cloth clung tightly, itching against exposed skin and smelling faintly of unidentifiable herbs. By the time the attendants were finished, they had wrapped so much gauze about me that I looked like I was being prepared for an Egyptian burial.

The attendants pulled back from me, hands on what I assumed were their hips, and looked on in appreciation of their handiwork. The white-faced goron nodded, clicked with obvious satisfaction, and told me that I could now dress as need be. The three alien women filed out of the nook like mendicants, clouds of steam swirling in their wake.

For my part, I had to admit that I felt much better. Much of the mind-slogging pain that had dogged me since I walked out of the grotto was gone, or at least receded into a medicated underhum. Cleanliness being close to godliness, I was feeling pretty godly at that moment. Even the foul-smelling unguents didn't seem so terrible under the fine, secure wrappings swathing my body. Okay. I could work with this.

A flabby sort of mental haze had draped itself over every thought and action I had taken since . . . well, God knew how long it had been since I scraped myself off the pumping cavern's floor. I was sloughing off the daze in slow, messy segments – a series of ungainly epiphanies that weren't really epiphanies at all. Just moments and considerations writ larger and brighter than when they had first come to me amid pain, shock, and surprise. Little acts of remembrance, strung together in a ragged, jumbled approximation of logical thought. For instance, the following came to me as a gelid afterthought, as my body cooled in the open air of the bathhouse:

They think that I'm the Hero. They think that I'm Link.

I smiled, then grimaced, and then smiled again.

Fuck.

To my eternal surprise and consternation, I did not have a screaming nervous breakdown. In fact, after the initial stab of cool panic that the realization brought, I felt a wave of reluctant but all-too-real acceptance. I thought that, in some strange way, I had expected this. The moment the Master Sword had slid from its pedestal, a molecule of the idea began to divide and expand through the back of my mind. Metastasized, even.

But this . . . God, _this_.

Just roll with it, man. Just fucking roll with it.

How, though? How? Jesus, I'm not the fucking Hero! I'm just some asshole who just happened to pick up the other guy's sword! I'm not the goddamn Link to the Triforce!

Coolly: What if you _are_?

I paused. No. How could . . . I mean . . . No. Impossible.

Who better than me, though? Who else but an expert on the subject? And who else could pull the Master Sword from its resting place at all?

It has to . . ., I thought, has to be a mistake. Some kind of insane cosmic mix-up.

And if it isn't?

_That _made me shiver. A sensation like jumping into a frozen ocean. Chills shuddered down my spine.

An insistent cough rose above the screens.

Ah. So. No time to waste worrying about it, huh? Rolling with it, it was.

I tied my hair back and dressed hurriedly in the same shabby shirt and jeans that I had worn to the bathhouse. After repacking my bag and making sure that the Master Sword was secure inside, I exited the bathing nook. Outside, only the pale-faced attendant remained. Eyes shining with lamplight, she led me back through the screened aisles and down to the bathhouse's lobby. There, she bowed, said something soft and incomprehensible, and disappeared through a side door.

The lobby had emptied of inhabitants but for a handful of figures waiting at the exit. Sounds of low-level chaos seeped through the front door. One of the people standing near the door was Tash Lon, who perked up and beckoned me over as I entered the room. As I strolled across the tiles to meet him, I took measure of the other men at his side.

Mohan Smythe I knew, but there were three other men that I didn't recognize. The first was a broad man in breastplate and mail. He had a gray-flecked beard and short-shorn hair that still curled slightly. He eyed me with naked suspicion and traced a finger along the sword sheathed at his hip. Standing very close to this blunt fellow was a short, reedy guy no older than I was. All eyeballs and reddish stubble, nervous lips atremble. An open pocket notebook or ledger sat in one hand and a businesslike little quill was gripped in the other.

The final newcomer was a goron festooned in green robes, a wheat-gold sash tied around his midsection. His toffee-colored skin was lined, creased, and folded into a map bespeaking deep experience. He leaned into the height of a polished black pole or walking staff, atop which three silver rings hung from a bracket. Beneath the heavy wrinkles of his brow, his eyes glittered like marbles. Despite his apparent age and stature, something about the goron exuded solidity and grit. He had the look of a burled, polished oak sculpture.

As I arrived at the entrance, Tash grinned (a bit nervously, it seemed) and said, "Aye, now! Here's the man o' the hour!"

"Yeah, that's me," I said, scratching the back of my head.

The man in armor growled, "Where is the sword? I need to see the sword."

Blinking, I said, "Oh, the uh . . . I packed it already?"

"_Packed _it?" His voice was pained, incredulous. He turned to Tash and grumbled, "Lord, are you certain that this is who . . .?"

Tash waved a meaty hand. "Oh, aye, aye. No need for any o' that, Commander." The rancher favored me with an awkward shrug. "Err, Linus, this here is Commander Len Groban, head o' the local garrison. Hylian army's top man in Oloro, he is."

"Yes," the soldier grunted. "I command the few real soldiers here in Oloro Town. I also train the local militia." He inclined his head to the shaky ginger at his right. "This is my clerk, Stefan. We were told that the 'Hero of the Triforce' had made his presence known in the Oloro Bathhouse. Has he, now?"

Feeling a little put out, I nonetheless extended my hand. "Hey. Linus Olsen." I considered a moment, grunted, and added, "Guess I'm the Hero."

Len Groban's eyebrows lifted. He made a sound as if he were preparing to speak, but a gentle, insistent baritone cut him off.

"We hope it will not offend you if we request some evidence as to that assertion."

It was the goron, who had silently shuffled forward and was gazing up at me as if he expected me to cut and run through the front door.

"Um . . ."

He lowered his lumpy chin a fraction and made a brief, weird chuckling noise. "My apologies – I did not introduce myself. I am Thum," he rumbled. "I am Elder and Mayor of Oloro Town."

I nodded and swung my hand – which Groban had not taken – to Thum. He gripped my arm with ironwood strength and continued, "Though it fills my heart with joy to hear of the Hero's coming, we cannot be too sure in the matter. As Elder, and as a sage of the goddesses, I wish to be certain."

"Aye," Commander Groban barked. "There have been impostors before. Some even with swords they claimed to be the Master."

At this, Tash cut in, "'He shall bear the Mark of the Goddesses in his flesh.' S' what the Scriptures say, don't it? And, 'The Hero shall wield the Master of All Swords to victory over that darkness,' or some such thing. Well, I'd say we got a clean case o' both those, lads! Go on, Linus – show 'em." At Tash's shoulder, Mohan Smythe nodded enthusiastically.

In short and somewhat reluctant order, I lifted my shirt sleeve and displayed my tattoo. As I did, I dreaded the inevitable moment when one would realize at last that it _was _a tattoo, and cry blasphemy. However, if any of those three sets of eyes saw anything but a divinely appointed birthmark, they kept it to themselves. Thum nodded politely; Groban grimaced and made the sign of the Triforce; Stefan the clerk gawped, made a barely audible squeak, and then set to madly scribbling something in his pocketbook. I noticed that, despite using a quill, he never stopped to dip it in ink.

Next, I slung my duffle bag to the floor and unzipped the Master Sword from its depths. This was a dog-and-pony show that I would have to get used to, it seemed.

The appearance of the sword had a much more pronounced effect than the Mark. Groban swore, his voice rising with appreciation, his flinty eyes grown huge.

"That," Thum breathed, "is the Master Sword. The Temple Sword. It can be no other."

With that, all those gathered (but me) finger-danced the now-familiar sign of the goddesses through the air. The tension drained from the room and was replaced with a kind of mute shock.

"Is it true," Len Groban finally clucked, "that you killed Elkan Fir-Bulbin? The raider chief?"

Just thinking about that made my insides ache. "I," I stammered, "well, I. Yeah. I guess. Kind of."

"Well, did you or didn't you, son?"

My jaw set and I felt a sudden, irritable dislike for the squat garrison commander. "Yeah. I guess I did," I said.

"Well, then," he snuffled. "It looks as if you are due the three-hundred Rupees that were on his head." Groban spoke with something approaching disappointment, as if he had hoped to bag Elkan himself. "Pending verification of the beast's death, of course."

"Feh. Whatever." I shrugged. "Just go down to the lowest pumping station. You'll get all the fuckin' verification you want."

All eyed me uneasily save Tash, who had become inured to my bursts of unusual profanity.

Groban eventually said, "Ah. In any event, you shall have to inquire at my quartermaster's office for your bounty when – and _if_ – we confirm that the godsforsaken snout is dead. You shall receive the compensation you deserve."

Thum rapped the base of his staff against the floor and declared, "All these things and more may be addressed in their time. For now, I suspect that the people of Oloro Town – _my _town – wish for news." At this, the Elder glanced at Groban meaningfully.

"And _what _news!" Smythe piped up. He looked like a five-year-old ready to tell his classmates about the bike he had gotten for Christmas.

Tash clapped his hands and rubbed them together expectantly; Commander Groban shrugged and sighed and seemed to relax just a little; even Stefan grew a smile as his quill continued to skitter across the yellow-rimmed pages of his ledger.

Thum took the lead as he should, the others giving him a respectful berth. He placed a hand on one of the bathhouse's front doors, half-turned, and ruefully said, "This may become overwhelming."

He was right.

Another crowd was gathered in the street, of course. Much larger than before. Its perimeter was unknowable in the dark, but I could tell that people filled and pressed up against the confines of the de facto square that surrounded the bathhouse entrance. Over a hundred faces turned our way as we exited. Pale, soot-darkened, bruised, tear-puffy, snot-lipped, broken-toothed, stony-eyed. Angry, contentious, hopeful, pained, joyful, sad, pious. Hylian and goron. A shimmering handful of tiny stars bobbed above the throng – fairies of jade, cobalt, and crimson come to watch this peculiar unveiling. As my feet hit cobbles, the vortex of voices that had filled the square began to subside.

The heat of the long day had not yet fled the streets and it now rose about me cloyingly. Wood smoke and sulfur swirled about the square like hounds at the chase. Someone coughed spasmodically and someone wept in a series of low, hiccupping sobs.

It wasn't all unfamiliar faces: Waiting just beside the entrance were Malora and Ingo. While Ingo looked on with his usual, awful sangfroid, Malora all but beamed with delight. Some of the bathers and militiamen who had attended my accidental "coming out" mingled with the crowd.

Ingo and Malora melted seamlessly into our little party as we marched, Elder Thum leading the pack as if he were out for a contemplative stroll. All eyes were on us. This gaze was new and powerful and completely unnerving. There was incredulity in it – a tilting of the head and eyes in a slow swing of disbelief. _That's him?_ their eyes said, and I heard the phrase out loud as we passed into the center of the open space.

At that rough central point, where I could turn my neck and look out into row after row of waiting townsfolk, Thum halted. All accompanying him stopped as well.

Anxious whispers rippled from lips to ears. Were the rumors true? Some of them? All of them? Aerosol frustration, the sour-dank stink of fear, and the weird perfume of hope permeated the air. Elsewhere in town, a post-battle din and tuning evening insects rattled over the rooftops. Hundreds of eyes shone wetly in the guttering light of the tall street lamps.

"People of Oloro!" Elder Thum intoned. A rhythmic basso, carried far over the crowd. Voices went out like snuffed candle flames.

"Fine citizens, all! By now, you know that we have once more suffered an attack by Ganon's cursed southern raiders. It is my melancholy duty to say that many of our friends and family died this day."

A sigh; a hiss. Resignation given breath.

"But!" Thum shouted. He clicked his staff on the ground and its rings jangled. "I bring good tidings as well as sad. Even glorious tidings. The first: Elkan Fir-Bulbin, that thrice-damned predator of our lands, is slain."

(And at that there were scattered exclamations of excitement and surprise, but I suspect that most of the crowd already knew. This was not the main event they had shown up for.)

"The raiders' desperate, foolhardy strike has left them beaten and broken. Their bodies litter our walls and the floors of our bathhouse. Many await the gallows in Commander Groban's stockades. I assure you, sweet people of Oloro Town, that they will trouble us no longer.

"And I bear even greater news, perhaps."

Ah – _now _he had their attention.

I felt light fingers on my skin and I looked down to see Malora give my hand a delicate but welcome squeeze. She smiled and sighed happily.

"Indeed, there were many heroes on this day. Some gave their lives to beat back the mongrel hordes of Ganon. But _this _man," he tilted the staff in my direction, "stands tall among us. Not only did he end the miserable life of that villain Fir-Bulbin, but he comes among us marked . . ." shit, but that dramatic pause was egregious, ". . . with the very sign of the goddesses!"

It was now a familiar invocation – similar to what happened in the bathhouse, but on a larger scale. Murmurs, gasps, oaths like a slow-spreading grassfire.

"What is more!" Thum said. "What is more – yes! – is that this man, this _hero_, wields none other than the legendary sword forged by the goddesses themselves in that dark, antediluvian era of Alvin the Father. He wields the Master of All Swords itself!"

As the crowd's level of collective astonishment spread like a fast-growing flower, a sandpaper voice levered into my ear. "Better show 'em the sword, lad," Ingo muttered.

Almost stumbling over this cue, I fumbled open my duffle and shuffled through its contents. My teeth gritted with gawky concentration. Though it was less than five seconds of flailing, it felt like an hour under the impatient gazes and grumbling of the Oloro townsfolk.

Then, with a feeling half of grim obligation and half of triumph, I shucked the Master Sword into my left hand and thrust it vertically into the air.

No one reacted.

Okay – no one reacted for _a moment_. It was, frankly, a crappy time for grand gestures and pronouncements of destiny. At nearly full dark, the square was hazy with wood smoke and bathhouse vapors, lit only by those flickering street poles. So, at first, no one saw anything but a somewhat ostentatious but generally quite mundane sword. Then murmurs of astonishment began to run through the front ranks. A few hands rose hesitantly, as if unsure whether to sign in homage. The idea – the revelation – spread slow and ungainly.

Before I knew what was happening, two of the scraped and bedraggled militiamen from the previous mob pressed into the open space. With faces tight-set, they rushed to me without a word. Despite my indignant, "Hey!" each man took me in hand and heaved upward. They raised me up to their brawny shoulders and, in turn, ascended the Master Sword so that all gathered could see.

Thus the golden Triforce on the sword's hilt caught the lamplight _just so_. In the gloom of Oloro's dark hour, the promised sign of the goddesses shimmered in midair as a prophecy fulfilled.

There was an inhalation. A stunned, jittering breath in every chest. There was something in that moment – the pause, its fulfillment, the infectiousness of that drop into exultation – that, well . . . I would be lying if I said that it didn't make my heart race.

A terse, enraged goron voice shouted, "It's a trick! He ain't no Hero!"

His cry was followed by a bomb burst of voices. Most tried to shout him down, but others rose up in shrill agreement.

"Got to be a fake . . .!"

"Look at it, then!"

". . . an outerlander. Just some outerlander!"

"Praise! _Praise_!"

"Another flimflammer, he is."

I didn't know the man who came to my rescue, pushing as he did through the front rows like a bouncer. He was young, stubble-shaded, and moved herky-jerky, as if his limbs didn't entirely follow his brain's commands. Nonetheless, his voice was bull-sure and strong as he bellowed, "Are you pinchin' fools daft? Look at the sword! Look at the bleedin' _sign_! Ain't no way there's another – that there's the fuckin' Hero o' the Triforce!

"Hail him! Hail the fuckin' Link! HAIL THE BLEEDIN' SAVIOR!"

With that, both the militiamen holding me up sang out, "LONG LIVE THE HERO OF THE TRIFORCE!"

The square exploded. A cacophony incomprehensible to me before that moment. An explosion not only of sound, but of pure, distilled emotion. An uncorking of long pent-up fear, anxiety, wishes, and longing. A breaking-down; a paroxysm; a typhoon; a bursting; an orgasm.

It was some minutes before the stalwart militiamen let me down. The moment my shoes touched the ground, it was the bathhouse all over again: A hailstorm of hands, fingers, grasps, and lips. Those two town guards, who I so desperately wanted to thank but never again saw past that night, began without prompting to work a kind of shake-and-bake crowd control. They held up hands and shouted back the bulging wall of exuberant townsfolk. Within a minute, they were joined by at least three other men in maul and surcoats. More familiar hands shot out and pulled me back, panting, into the Lon family's circle.

Ingo shouted over the hubbub: "You need to get a scabbard for that there snout-sticker, lad. Goin' to get quite bothersome, always pullin' it out of yonder bag!"

I saw Tash conferring by turns with Elder Thum, Commander Groban, and Mohan Smythe. As he did, Malora dipped into my field of vision and shouted, "Ain't it grand, Linus?"

I nodded, goggling vacantly at the sudden madness that gripped the street. People, suddenly denied the ability to rush the revealed savior, were running, dancing, shouting, and breaking into song. Women and men alike wept on the curbs.

Tash, appearing between blinks, leaned close and coughed, "Oy, now! Beautiful as this is – and it's right pretty – we got a proper celebration waitin' for us. C'mon – all o' us got a feast to attend at the Silver Shell!"

"Silver Shell?" I managed.

Out ahead of us, Elder Thum grew a bizarre goron grin and raised his staff. With a flourish, he began walking down the street.

"Aye!" Tash nodded. "That's the inn where we're stayin' tonight. Just about the best in town, I reckon!"

Without really knowing it, my legs had moved to follow Thum. Now we ambled down the avenue, approaching the celebrating masses as one approaches waves breaking on a shore. Malora trotted to my left looking beatific; Tash kept pace on my right.

"How'd you get that together so quick?" I yelled.

Tash rubbed the bald spot atop his head with reddening embarrassment. "Errr, well, haha. I kind o' already told the cooks at the Burnin' Brand to whip us up somethin' special, before we went to yonder bathhouse." An abashed but genuine smile. "While you was gettin' stitched up, I paid a lad to run 'em a message. I, err, may have told 'em to send over the food to the Silver Shell dinin' room for some caterin', and to, err, make it fit for the bleedin' Hero o' the Triforce."

I let a chuckle float out, then gave into the pleased cackle that followed. I slapped Tash's shoulder and told him that he was a fine, fine bastard.

We plunged into that fleshbound sea. All about us, celebrants broke the confused cordon about our party and assaulted us with congratulations. I hugged my duffle (which I had tucked the Master Sword back into as if it were an impenetrable lockbox) to my body and felt an anxious grin split my face.

Elder Thum doubled back, waved his lacquered pole like a shaman, and successfully dispersed the manic well-wishers. In a voice like a timpani, he declared that no citizen of Oloro Town would molest the Hero Ascendant for the rest of the night.

"However," he crooned, "let this long night be one of rejoicing!"

In hindsight, I guess that it could have blown into a riot right then and there. People, for want of a better term, had lost their shit. However, the mood of this mass of humanity, teetering close to hysteria as it was, instead gave way to a kind of collective high. A surge of goodwill and salutation went through them. Something like mania transformed into the diamonds of the human spirit.

Runners peeled off from the main mass of the mob and dashed down side streets to spread the news. Those that the revelation had not yet touched felt it quickly and with breathless fervor. In the time that followed, the massed, heady breath that I had felt in the square came to grip the entire town. When it released, it came with laughter, shouting, screams, and yelps of intense victory. The people of this walled burg proceed to let loose with all their hearts and souls. Men, women, children; fit and frail; human and otherwise. Within minutes, all of Oloro Town – from its squares to its tenements, from its workshops to its walls – had become one massive party.

Banners unfurled from windows: The soft green of Eldin Province, harvest colors of Chovo, and even the imposing, veinal purple and gold flag of Hyrule's royal family. Working women doffed their shawls and let down their long hair. Musicians – some clearly professionals, but most enthusiastic amateurs – took to the streets. Our slow walk was accompanied by the discordant, exhilarated sounds of drums, fifes, cymbals, hand bells, odd little banjoes, and gourd-like instruments so alien I just had to stop and listen to their lilting notes. Husbands and suitors took their ladyloves' hands and just danced, at first timidly and then with open abandon.

While the remainders of the initial bathhouse mob no longer lunged forward to grab at me as per Thum's request, they _did _follow us. Most formed into loose family and fraternal groups, chatting excitedly and beginning the motions of uninhibited celebration. We walked and walked as well, as if merely being in my presence was reassuring, or perhaps, intoxicating. From side streets came handfuls of folk who joined them, trailing gaudy holiday cloaks and holding torches high. Some of the women danced demurely as they came, spinning beneath many-colored festival scarves. They sang songs and shouted encouragement, greetings, wishes for a kind destiny.

And so it became a parade. A procession of form and joy and color, dance-marching through Oloro's boulevards. Music of a dozen stripes and sounds pressed us on our way. Cups, bottles, and steins seemed to appear in every hand. We were toasted from open doorways and rooftops.

Packs of squealing children came for us, running alongside like shoals of caffeinated fish. They broke away one at a time, dashing madcap past the Lons and the handful of militia still keeping pace. Each sprinted giggling and red-faced to my side, where they made a pageant of touching my arm or bag or just the edge of my shirt. Then they took off as if Ganon himself were on their heels, their friends cheering them on.

Out beyond the walls of Oloro, barking explosions sounded. Flashes rose like strobe lights, challenging the stars. When I leaned in to ask what they were, Malora breathlessly told me that field workers must be firing off excavation bombs in the sort of mindless celebratory excess that I could get behind.

The same kids in tabards that I had seen lighting the street lamps now bounded up their ladders with little cloth bags in their hands and holiday grins on their faces. They tossed handfuls of sparkling powder into the lamp flames, and at once the light burst and sparked into a dazzling kaleidoscope of firework colors. We tromped through streets bathed in coruscating blues, greens, and golds.

It got to me, then. Everything. This symphony of light, sound, smoke, and naked sentiment wove its way into my chest and seemed to _unlock _something. I felt an unburdening – something very like the moment of stunned and sanguine acceptance I had felt in the wake of my first battle with Karrik. A sweeping away of old and dusty doubts. In their place spread a warmth; a joy; an excitement unheralded since the greatest memories of childhood. Something like satisfaction at a grand promise, at long last fulfilled.

A girl in skirts and petticoat twirled past us. Her eyes were closed and she danced as if in a dream.

There came a grin, then laughter, and my limbs quickened. I spread my arms in the manner of a saint, then moved my feet like a devil. Shuffling, then stepping out with long quick strides like the marshal of this little impromptu parade. I danced amid happy catcalls and the sounds of far-off, celebratory detonations. I spun as the other dancers spun, soaked in sparking light, trailing laughter like music. Sure, I nearly tripped over my own feet and cracked a tooth on the paving stones; sure, it was White Guy Dancing at its finest, spazziest nadir. But, shit – it felt so _good_.

Then Malora Lon was in front of me, curving into view, looking at me with odd amusement, and I knew that I had to keep moving. I knew what I needed to do. Without hesitation or so much as a word, I thrust out my arms and grabbed her hands. Her eyes went big as I swept her about, continuing the spin. Malora grew her own intense smile, which opened and erupted with excited laughter. We spun as we continued to move, linked then, looking in each other's eyes and feeling the weight of two long days locking us together in wild exuberance.

She blinked and giggled giddily and danced with me as one might at a wedding.

So, I doubled down. I adjusted my grip on her arms, corrected my dizzying path, and shot out. With a strength born only of such moments, I lifted her into the air. We spun again, her feet yards above the ground, and I felt a fluttering sensation that I had not experienced in an almost desperate number of years.

Malora laughed rapturously. Her face glowed blue in the spectral, flashing light of the lamps. Her hair silhouetted the stars.

God, how I wanted to kiss her at that moment.

But I didn't.

Instead, I ended our circle and set her gently on the ground. The sudden maniac gesture had set all my wounds to aching. The pain reminded me just how we had come to this juncture, and that knowledge cut like a butcher's knife through the thoughtless pleasure of the interlude. Though I smiled at Malora and she smiled back, looking suddenly as coy and beautiful as a princess in a fairy tale, the next step I took was with a limp. Her expression faltered and she rushed in to buoy me. I waved her away, wordless, and the false look of stoicism I gave her must have been transparent indeed.

We continued on our way.


	19. 19

**19**

After a fine and amiable journey, we finally reached the Silver Shell Inn. It was a building of stout brick, colonnades, and olive green window shutters. Balconies with iron scrollwork railings crowned the third floor. Torches atop tall poles flanked the entrance steps, spitting and smoking in welcome.

By the time we reached the inn's front door, the mob trailing our flanks had largely dispersed back into Oloro Town's raucous corners. About a dozen stragglers stopped in the inn's front yard. They shouted after us with sarcastic catcalls of elitism, but one could tell that there was no venom in them. One of the crew produced an open jug and passed it back and forth between increasingly blotto gales of cackling.

At some point in the hike across town, Commander Len Groban had wandered off to attend to whatever duties left him such a dour bastard. However, his spidery clerk had remained with us, appearing to walk and jot notes in tandem. What exactly he was noting escaped me, but it wasn't something that weighed especially on my mind at that moment.

Tash ushered our ragtag little band through the door with grand gestures, while the remaining militiamen turned and took position on the steps. Apparently, the town fathers weren't counting on their people to actually stay away from the Link for a night.

The interior of the Silver Shell was warmly lit with hanging lanterns. A receiving desk sat to our right and stairs climbed to the upper floors at our left. Before us was a front great room dotted with round, polished tables and venerable-looking chairs. A small fire rolled in a hearth fronting the room. It was empty of guests, but a few unfamiliar figures milled about the area, looking as if they had been waiting for us to arrive.

A stooped, vein-crossed, old Hylian man rounded the receiving desk and greeted us with hoarse enthusiasm. Though he made a quick and almost perfunctory sign of the goddesses in my direction, he directed most of his fawning words to Mohan Smythe.

Malora whispered, "Though he may not look it, Mister Smythe actually owns this inn. That there innkeep is his man."

Pleasantries out of the way, the doddering innkeep led us into the great room. Stefan and Thum each looked about appreciatively, though I suspect for different reasons. It was a well-appointed place, covered in ornamental wood paneling and strips of green wallpaper. The room smelled richly of pipe tobacco, oven cooking, and mahogany.

Off to one side, a door swung outward and a harried-looking boy in an apron emerged from the steam- and sound-soaked confines of a kitchen. Though it didn't look very large, the kitchen appeared to be stuffed to the walls with people. Cooks and servants jostled for position in a room clearly not meant for their number. It was only a momentary vision, as the door closed tight at the kid's heel. He looked at us with what had to be growing panic and then scooted across the great room bearing his night's work: a gray platter, heaped with what had to be a dozen long drumsticks. The meat exuded wild ribbons of fragrant steam. The serving boy hurried to the back of the room and through a panel door that stood halfway open.

"Ooh, fried cuccoo," Mohan Smythe said with raised eyebrows. "Tash, my fellow, ya' do know how to do these things right!"

Sounds of agreement from all around.

At this point, Thum motioned me over and set to presenting me to the other folk who had been loitering about the great room. I actually knew one of them: Rickard Tiller, the other man of means that Tash had introduced me to earlier in the bathhouse. A lifetime ago, it seemed. At his shoulder was a portly but burly man of advancing years, who Rickard introduced as his father, Count Raymond Tiller. Beyond these two, the names and faces of the dignitaries attending this spur-of-the-moment celebratory feast blended together – especially since others filed in soon after I made Count Raymond's acquaintance.

Marlys Doon. Sir Clement Reming (retired). Tia Vombaldi. Count Walther Smith.

Once the town elder had paraded me about sufficiently and my head was dull with names, someone received a cue to shuffle the whole shindig out of the great room. I sidled up close to the familiar life raft of the Lons. We were herded through the back doors that the serving boy had disappeared through. This actually took us out of the inn proper and onto a long porch or veranda that ran the back length of building. Above us was a fluttering tarp awning. Out beyond ornamented rails that edging the veranda waited sat a patch of pristine, shadow-painted lawn. Paper lanterns strung along the wall cast a veil of husky light.

The main event sat before us, ornamented in all its glory: A full-length dining table, heaped with dishes containing what appeared to be every possible permutation of the concept of food. Baskets of golden bread; molehills of greens; at least two more platefuls of the fried cuccoo we had seen earlier. Bowls, platters, crocks, pitchers, and tureens full to overflowing with weird and sumptuous delicacies.

At first, I thought: Jesus Christ, I can't eat any of this. My stomach was still sore and greasy from repeated vomiting. It was all too easy to remember Elkan's bubbling skin; all too easy to see his eyeball burst and run down his ragged cheek like candle wax.

I gulped apprehensively. Okay, I thought. I can do this. Just . . . be polite. And don't fucking throw up.

Stowing my precious duffle beneath my chair, I took a seat to the right of the head of the table. When I was situated, I noted that no one else had yet settled into their chairs. Everyone on the veranda – from the rich town merchants to a gobsmacked serving girl – stared at me with confused embarrassment, as if they had forgotten my name.

I coughed, "Oh, right. Grace. Or . . . stuff." I stood, bumping knees against the edge of the table in the process.

Standing away from the rest of us, Elder Thum launched into a quick litany of ceremonial words. It was obviously an old and well-practiced recitation, speeding by with such oiled quickness that I was only able to catch two words out of ten.

"By strength of Din and wit of Farore . . .

". . . let no man . . .

". . . and in the light of righteousness . . .

". . . forgive as the Three . . .

". . . walk the path of their glory, forever and ever. Goddesses praised."

All gathered echoed that last phrase. I mumbled it a moment later, feeling a little awful at my apostasy as my hosts all raised fingers and carved invisible triangles through the air.

On another cultural cue that I missed utterly, the feastgoers took to their chairs. This time, I stiffened and refused to move as my ass met seat. Better to look a little slow than like some rude hick. Thum settled into the head chair at the opposite end of the table; Tash Lon took the head spot nearest me.

A nerve-addled servant appeared and I was handed a mug of hot, greenish tea. It stank something awful and tasted like hot pond water. Elder Thum insisted that it was very special, ceremonial tea – "The tea of the goddesses' welcoming" – but eyed me with sympathy as I gulped it down. Once the grungy stuff was past my lips, another round of Triforce-sketching took place and it seemed that we might finally get down to the potentially excruciating business of dinner.

No such luck: Thum thumped the edge of the table with a light but determined paw. Any conversation died out. The Elder leaned his goron bulk against his chair and declared, "Well met, everyone! Well met!

"It is a fine thing to see all of you, friends and neighbors of Oloro, at this feasting table. As you are all very well aware, within only the last handful of hours, our town – and, yes, our entire world – has changed. Indeed, were it not for remarkable events, this might have been a time of mourning for the men and women murdered by moblin savagery. Instead," Thum rumbled, "we rejoice! Know that we shall pay homage to our dead and their sacrifice on the morrow, but on this night we celebrate the greatest news we have received in five long years of war."

Thum gripped a cup before his place setting and raised it high as his stubby arm would allow. He shouted, "To the coming of a savior! To the coming of _the Hero_!"

A toast, then. Cups were raised by all except me.

"To the Hero!" they shouted, and tipped back with relish.

I think I turned the shade of raw steak.

"And make no mistake!" Thum continued. "As a sage and your spiritual leader, I have almost no doubt that this lad, strange as he may seem, is the Hero of legend. All signs have come into focus, friends and countrymen. In our darkest hour, as the base corruption of Ganon and his grotesque 'Protectorate' spreads through our kingdom, _he is come. _Mark my words, children of Hyrule: The day of Ganon's reckoning is nearly at hand!"

This was answered with a round of dignified applause. I had gritted my teeth at Thum's damning, nearly-faint praise, but I was immediately overwhelmed by the implications of the rest of his speech. Good God: was that really what these people expected me to do? I began to sweat.

"Before we partake of this wonderful-looking repast, let me thank Lord Tashiel Lon for arranging this fine celebration. It was a great and pleasant coincidence that you arrived in our city, sir, and we thank you. That you apparently brought the Link with your caravan is all the more astonishing and wonderful." The goron raised his cup once more. "To Lord Lon – a fine host and all but the heraldof our good fortune!"

It was Tash's turn to color beet-red. When I glanced at Malora, sitting across the table and slightly to my right, I noticed that she stared down at her flatware with her own expression of consternation.

Huh. That's fucking weird. Something clicked toward understanding in my head. A realization some hours in the making. Then the many and multifarious dishes began to pass, and it was swept away.

Thus blessed and fully welcomed, the party dug in. One of the platters mounded with fried fowl appeared from my right. The goron who passed it to me smiled with such childish reverence that I felt terrible that I wasn't actually going to eat.

A funny thing happened, then: I actually felt my stomach roll over and growl with hunger. I eyed the drumsticks and fat thighs with a sudden longing that fought against the ever-weakening holdouts of my previous nausea and disgust. No choice at all. I speared one cuccoo leg, then another, and passed the platter on to a grateful Tash. Though I knew that other dishes were heading my way, I grabbed a hot drumstick and took a terrific, somewhat terrifying bite.

It was the start of one of the most welcome meals I had ever had.

The cuccoo itself was immensely pleasing – gamier than chicken and somewhat reminiscent of the pheasant I had once been served at a Minnesota Thanksgiving. The breading it had been fried crunched apart with each bite. It was infused with spices that I almost recognized but could not name.

With the meal in full swing, light conversation flowered as the dishes circled the long table. In the yard behind the Silver Shell Inn, unseen insects played humming love songs among the bows of small trees. The sounds of clamorous celebration fell from over the rooftops. We ate with the same kinds of two-tined forks I had used the evening before, though the knives we used were decidedly more pedestrian than Tash's massive steak-carvers.

The sheer variety and number of options passed to me was flabbergasting:

The same servant who I had seen stumbling out the inn's back door poured me a bowl of creamy chowder full of carrots, rice, and a purple root that I found tasted like sweet onion. When I saw that no spoon waited next to my plate, I had to wait until other feasters brought their bowls directly to their lips. "Learn by example," became my watch-phrase of the night.

There were sweet, starchy tubers served toasted. We slathered them with tart twillberry jam from a small crock that passed with their serving plate.

There was a dish of a kind of savory corn hash that reminded me of the grits I had once tried in a soul food restaurant in Florida.

A bowl full of what looked like grass clippings turned out to be a sharp, spicy salad of individual vegetable stalks. It came drizzled in a dressing that tasted of honey and garlic.

Rich bread, still radiating heat from the oven.

Little yellow-green grapes, sour but pleasing to pop into my mouth between bites of other food.

A plate of knuckle-sized puff pastries came my way. When I ate one, I found it full of a salty but delicious sort of meat. When I inquired after its origins, I was told by Tash that it was "inland octorock bacon." I immediately ate another, and would soon enough have a third.

Of course, not everything was a taste sensation. I was passed a plate of dark, wide-capped mushrooms that had apparently been marinated in a vinegar-based sauce and then roasted. I felt my lip start to curl and my nose begin to turn up.

I goddamn _hate _mushrooms.

Not wanting to offend, I speared one anyway and sliced off a chunk of it. As Mohan Smythe stared and nodded with approval, smiling like a stoned hyena, I popped the piece of fungus into my mouth and began to chew. Jesus Christ. I made all the noises expected of such occasions ("Mmm. Yeah."), all the while focusing every bit of my being into not gagging on the earthy, corpse-flesh horror caught between my teeth. Swallowing felt like a great victory.

A wooden mug of beer was planted in front of me. It was thin, mealy stuff and I only took a few polite sips of it as the meal went on. I stuck to the little clay cup of water, suddenly glad that I wouldn't have an excuse to get drunk in front of all these strangers.

It was a damned good thing that I (largely) enjoyed the spread, because the meal's conversation seemed to flow around me. Despite the fact that I was ostensibly the guest of honor at the gathering, few made any attempts to engage me.

Tash, though at my elbow, spent most of the meal shoveling down food as if he had spent a week fasting beforehand. When he did talk, it was mostly to Mohan Smythe, who sat to his left and directly across from me. Both men chugged mug after mug of beer. Poppies bloomed on their cheeks. They occasionally turned to me and said things like, "Ain't that right?" or, "That'll be the day, eh Linus?" but quickly went back to their increasingly inebriated personal exchange.

Other members of the group spoke excitedly of the day's events, glancing with nervousness or some kind of vicarious thrill in my direction as they gesticulated. I lazily tuned into these conversations at intervals, not willing to take the effort to follow them entirely but definitely interested in their content.

"Do you think," said one plump, matronly woman, "that the King will issue the writ?"

"Now?" said an older, straight-backed gentleman (who may have been the retired Sir Reming). "Who is to say?"

The woman's fold-encrusted eyes flicked my way. "Oh, but certainly, _now_, it's as the Elder said. All the signs have come at last. Even an old believer like the King should be spurred to action."

"But will he _need _it? The writ?"

Both faces creaked in my direction and then snapped back when they met my eyes.

"Who is to say?" laughed the gentleman. "If it is as the legends say, then full legions may not ever be necessary."

A gray-domed goron sitting next to the Hylian woman cut in with a clicking laugh, which was probably more than a little beer-soaked: "Ah-hahaha! With the Hero risen up, the King ain't got nothin' to worry about no more." Black eyes blinked and rolled. "Were I our sovereign, I'd be more preoccupied with gettin' myself a proper heir! By hook or by crook, Din please ya'."

The woman showed contemptuous teeth in a failed approximation of a smile. "Now, now . . ." she hissed.

With an indignant sniff, the aged man leaned toward the goron and said, "There have been many fine sovereign Queens in Hyrule's history."

"Aye, aye," clacked the goron. "But this time around . . .?"

The matron waved a dismissive hand at her conversation partners. "Please. This is neither the time nor the place to gossip about our esteemed royal family. Especially the princess, the poor girl. Let us discuss something else."

With that, I officially turned my attention to another helping of octorock bacon pastry.

At some point, as I delightedly tore into a hunk of bread that tasted of comfort incarnate, my eyes wandered across the table. They rose to where Malora sat, pressed in on one side by Ingo's bony shoulders and Count Raymond's corpulence on the other. Her utensils were crossed on her empty, sauce-swirled plate. She was looking right at me. A faraway and unreadable expression lurked deep in her eyes. When our gazes met, Malora started and reflexively looked away. Her hand shot out and grabbed her water cup, which rose unevenly to her lips. A blush crept below her freckles.

I remembered how I had felt just a little while earlier, while I had been twirling her bodily through night air. A sparking tremor in my gut.

Be fucking realistic.

I shook my head and then hoped that no one had seen the gesture.

Christ, Linus. You've known her how long? Two days? Less? Pedal down. You're barely keeping up with all this shit as it is.

Dessert was a thick, chilled cream that fell somewhere between custard and gelato. It tasted smoothly of buttery vanilla and was topped with nuts like almonds. Despite the considerable strain on my stomach, I wolfed it down happily. After I pushed the porcelain dish aside with nary a smear of the stuff left, I lounged back like a potentate and surveyed the table.

As was befitting the just-served course, dinner was winding down. Men and women lounged back in their chairs looking sated as pythons. A few of the men produced pipes and began to load them with sticky handfuls of tobacco. The thick, swirling scent of the leaf filled the air. Eyelids fluttered. A threat of descending into a booze- and fat-fueled coma. A few people rose, bid me terse farewell, and exited the inn's veranda as if it were about to catch fire.

One fellow, whom I had not been introduced to earlier in the night, stood and stared purposefully in my direction. He adjusted his brown waistcoat, took a breath, and strode toward me.

The man was ambiguously young – anywhere from twenty to thirty – with a pointed jaw and deep-set gray eyes. His dirty blonde hair was slicked back with a kind of pomade that glistened like old beef fat. He wore a pair of copper-framed glasses – the first I had seen in Hyrule. Two pimples formed an angry snakebite on the side of his nose.

"Good evening, sir," he said. His voice was thin and quick, as if he had just come off a strenuous hike.

I nodded tiredly and returned the pleasantry. When he didn't turn to leave, I asked, "Something I can do for you, man?"

About his collar, the man wore a black cravat tied tight as a noose. One finger rose and tugged at it now. Despite the nervous mannerism, his eyes were steely, probing. He showed me white teeth and asked, "You then, are the Hero?"

Oh shit son, here we go. Better get real used to this routine.

Though my nod was hesitant, I said, "Yeah. Pleased to meet you, uh . . .?"

His eyebrow arched with magnificent skepticism. He said, "The Link to the Triforce, then? The human conduit of the goddesses' will? The man chronicled in dozens of legends throughout all of Hyrule's history? The man prophesied to be reborn at the hour of the Old Darkness's ascent?"

Huh.

"Yep," I said. "That's me."

He inclined his head and gave me more of his non-smile smile. "Well met then, sir. Alas, I did not catch your name . . ."

"Uh, Linus Olsen at your service, dude."

"Ah. Linus, then." The lenses of his spectacles rippled orange with lamplight. "Linus, I was not fortunate enough to see your, ah, _presentation _to the fair folk of this town. Would you mind if I asked to see your sword. Your _master _sword?"

Now, _that _got some attention. Lingerers at the feast table turned to the two of us. Other conversations grew whispered and sparse. I watched Ingo lean forward and Malora sink a little in her chair. Tash favored me with a rosy, half-lidded smile.

I finally nodded. "All right. Sure." I pushed back my chair, swept under it, and opened the black duffle. Anyone who hadn't yet seen a zipper in action twitched a little at its sound. The Master Sword rose from under the table resting in my hand. There were others who hadn't yet seen it; they stood and leaned now with inhalations on their lips.

The young man took a shuffling step, eyes growing larger in their hollows. A hesitant and almost involuntary hand rose at his side; then he seemed to check it.

"It is so . . . _old_," a halting, faceless voice murmured.

Adjusting his glasses, the unnamed man nodded. "It does look old, yes. Where did you say you obtained this?" he asked flatly.

Shrugging while holding a sword is harder than one would think. I made a half-effort, then sighed, "I found it in some ruins. They were buried in a forest."

"Which forest was this?"

I felt an irritable prickle and continued, "I don't really know, man. You may have noticed that I'm not from around here." I spun a finger around an ear.

"Yes, very much so." The man's voice was cool and patient. "But please, it may be important – _could_ you lead anyone back to that forest? Do you know where in Hyrule it is hidden?"

"No. I have no idea where it actually _is_," I said.

"Would you then say that you, ah, _lost _these woods?"

This prompted chuckles from some of the other diners, and the young man grew a restrained smirk.

"Oh, man," I grinned. "That's clever. 'Lost those woods.' Ha! Yeah. I see what you did there. So you think those were the actual, honest-to-God _Lost Woods_ that I hiked through?"

He crossed his arms and said, "Well. That remains to be seen, do you not think?"

I surveyed him then, trying to get an idea of the bigger picture of the man. Contradictory on the first glance. Cucumber-cool, but jittery at the edges. A little antagonistic glint in his eyes and posture.

Though I still held the sword, I circled its tip at the newcomer and said, "Hey man. Who'd you say you were, again? Oh – wait. You didn't, did you?" My turn to raise my eyebrows.

Engaging in that quarter-bow inclination of his forehead, he drolly declared, "My name is Shad. I'm an alchemist. Lately of the Guild of Strangers in Hylium. It was luck –or the providence of Farore – that I was in Oloro Town on business this week."

Though Elder Thum, Stefan the scribe, and a couple others looked on without interest, all else murmured in surprise. For my part, my eyes nearly bugged out from a familiar and quickly diminishing shock.

How many more of these people am I going to meet? I mused.

Though I wanted to ask the obvious questions, Shad spoke quickly. "You know much about Hylian lore for a foreigner, Linus. Pray tell, have you spent much time in our nation?"

Sure, I thought. About twenty years, give or take. A whole lifetime spent to the tune of _The Legend of Zelda_.

"Only a couple days," I lied. "But I heard many of your, uh, legends where I come from."

"Some say you come from a land on the opposite side of the world," Shad said. "Hyrule must be a mighty nation indeed if we are known to the peoples across the gray chaos of the oceans."

"You sure are!" I fake-laughed.

"Fascinating. Now, Linus." Another impatient tug at his cravat. "May I see that sword? May I look at it closely?" He held out a smooth, pale hand.

I brought the sword close to my body almost out of reflex. My gaze darted to Malora, also reflexively, and I saw a hideous apprehension there.

"W-what do you want with it?" I asked.

Shad's attempt at a reassuring smile was anything but. There was ice behind the light he tried to show in his eyes. "Linus, sir. As an alchemist, I am devoted to gathering and examining knowledge. I wish only to compare your magnificent weapon against what I have read about the Temple Sword. This is truly an honor, you see."

Though I hesitated still, nods and words of encouragement from all around pushed forward my hand. If these folk trusted the man, how could I do otherwise?

Shad gently took the sword, hefted it, and pressed his face close in the admittedly feeble light. His pupils scanned like lasers over the engravings on the sword's hilt. They bounced over the golden Triforce and skimmed along the chipped edge of the blade. "Hmph. Needs forge repair, in any event," he muttered. "It cuts well?"

"As far as I can tell, man."

He didn't respond, instead running one thumb cautiously over the thinner, tapering portion of the blade closest to the hilt. He licked his lips and said, "I would like to take some samples."

"Samples?" I blurted.

What the fuck?

Even the other feast guests looked appalled by the suggestion. Though they said nothing, their hanging jaws and startled postures told it all.

"Yes." He cleared dishes backward from an unused portion of the table and gingerly set the sword there. Shad pulled a treated black leather bag, about the size of a shaving kit, from within his waistcoat. When he pulled open its buttoned flap, Shad revealed pockets full of fine metal instruments, tightly tied bags, and cork-stopped vials. This he lay next to the Master Sword.

"I would like to – and frankly, _need to_ – remove some small samples of the sword's materials."

"Fucking _why_?" I croaked.

"I swear to you that it won't harm the sword itself in any serious manner," Shad said obsequiously.

"Hero." This last voice belonged to Elder Thum, who still relaxed at the far end of the table.

"The Guild of Strangers is a friend to the people of Oloro Town," the Elder intoned. "I can also personally vouch for this man. Though he is young, he is known far as a great alchemist."

I directed my next statement more to the world than to Shad himself: "I just want to know _why_ you _need _to do that, man."

Straightening, Shad said determinedly, "I believe that, in these extraordinary times, some due diligence is needed before we leap to outlandish conclusions."

"So. You want to test it. Test me," I murmured. "You want to see if I'm who I say I am."

"When you put it so basely, sir, then yes. Though I have no doubt that you are quite heroic," he gestured to the stitched wound still on my face, "I do have doubts that you are _the Hero_.

"Study of the Hero's legend, while not my primary vocation, is a fascination to me. I have read widely of the remaining tales of Links past. While you and, ah, your weapon do fit some of the signs of a Hero's manifestation, there are . . . _other _considerations. As such, I am obliged to use my skills to evaluate your claim."

I suddenly felt like I might vomit after all. I never fucking claimed to be _anything_ before tonight, you cocksucker! I just started saying, _Yes. That's me_, because it was easier!

"How will you even know?" I coughed. "What kind of test can you put metal through to see if it's blessed by a fucking goddess?"

"We have our ways," Shad said.

Infuriating. Giving in to Thum's enticement, I told Shad to do what he "needed" to do. The alchemist worked quickly, hands darting in and out of his little science bag like meerkats from a burrow. The party guests now gathered around, leaning their bulks and their bodies in to see the details of Shad's work. The spectacled man growled at the smokers to say back, so as not to contaminate his samples.

In short order, Shad: scraped off a bit of metal from the hilt with a file; did the same to the blade; scratched off a crusty flake of blood with a probe; and, finally, pulled something brown and organic-looking from between the Triforce designs and the hilt with tweezers. All these samples fell into vials and were sealed with cork.

The whole humiliating pageant twanged on the rage centers of my brain. Though I managed to stay calm through a still-healthy dose of denial, I had to admit that this familiar four-eyes had pissed me off. He had called me out in front of these new friends and allies as if I were some sly-eyed conman.

And what was worst was that he was basically right.

Shad stowed his samples and instruments. The black bag burrowed back into the folds of his coat.

"I will return to Hylium with this evidence with all due speed," Shad announced. "Though we are not a royally employed guild, I promise all gathered here that King Daphnes Harkinian will hear of whatever it is that I discover. Good night, ladies and gentlemen." He turned to me formally. That semi-respectful head-bob. "I hope you do not hold onto your grudge, sir. I am only doing my duty, and an important duty it is. While I know that it has vexed you, I promise that I cultivate no ill will toward your person."

Now the bow became realer, more relaxed, even apologetic. "Should you be the Hero of the Triforce, Linus Olsen, I wish you all the luck of Farore and congratulations of Nayru. I am certain that we shall see each other once more. Good night to you."

He didn't wait for a reply. Instead, he nodded to the party, pivoted on a scuffed heel, and walked purposefully from the veranda. His loud steps faded into the interior of the Silver Shell.

His departure precipitated another cloudburst of conversation. While people couldn't hear me, I muttered, "Fucking hell!"


	20. 20

**20**

Later, the rest of the party dispersed to the winds. Servants wheeled out impatiently to clear the feast's remains. I saw worn-out looking caterers making bee-lines for the kitchen and (I assumed) a side exit. Mohan Smythe lumbered out of the Silver Shell so drunk that he leaned into walls and doorframes. It was probably just as well – the wealthy farmer's face had swollen and stretched from the beating he had received from the bokoblins that afternoon. The Tillers promised to take him home. I did not envy the morning that awaited him.

Tash Lon (_Lord Tashiel_) wrapped me in a big, booze-stinking embrace. His mustache twitched happily. When he disengaged the hug, he pressed an iron key into my palm and said that my room for the night was on the third floor.

"Linus," he said with sudden, besotted seriousness. "Linus. Now that you, eerrr, now that everyone knows who you _are_ . . ." The rancher looked at me wetly. "Do ya' still want to travel with us? I tell you now that there's no better, lad. We'll take you . . . wherever you need to go. Wait." He blinked with slow realization. "Err. No. Sorry. The milk. I have to deliver the milk to Hylium." After a brief grimace later, Tash laughed, "Well then, aye! Want to come with us all the way to Hylium, you gods-blessed Hero?"

I echoed his laugh and said, "Sure, Tash. Sure. You've . . . you've treated me right, man." Though I wasn't drunk at all, the exchange had left me feeling that way. A pleasant, electric sensation buzzed in my chest.

With that, we parted ways. I bid goodnight to everyone who remained in the great room. Elder Thum, Ingo, Stefan (still writing like a man possessed), and Malora Lon all watched me go. I clomped through the inn and up its stairs, eager to reacquaint myself with a bed. _Any _bed. Up on the third floor, I fumbled in the light of oil lamps as I tried each of four doors along the cramped, shadowy hallway. After all, Tash hadn't told me my room number. I found the correct keyhole at the very end of the hall, situated beside a stone bust of an angry-looking, weathered Hylian. The sculpture bore an inscrutable inscription.

The dancing flame of an already-lit lamp greeted me as I entered. It was a small and cozy room, with a rough-but-charming four-poster bed and a cramped writing desk in one corner. A porcelain wash basin shone with lemon-scented water. In another corner waited a clean, enameled chamber pot. Glass-paneled doors opened onto the trellised balcony. After stowing my luggage beneath the bed, I opened these doors and stepped out into the whisper-warm night.

Oloro Town still echoed with the collective voice of jubilation. Though the street lamps now only shone their normal, dull yellow and few people danced in the avenues, I could see that parties now dominated every building in sight. Tone-deaf, shitfaced voices sang of hearts and heroes and victory.

The full, bloody face of the moon hung over the valley. Through its silver and crimson-tinged corona, the stars didn't show their full number this night. A tepid breeze breathed in from off the plains and brought with it scents of grain, dust, and pooled water.

I looked back over my shoulder, to the flickering light of the room behind me. The blankets piled on the bed beckoned as if they were wool sirens.

Shit, man! There is no fucking way I can sleep right now!

A paradox-tremor of excitement, anxiety, and exhaustion throbbed in my limbs. I knew, logically, that I should lie down and let the rest come as it must. But – mother of God, _but_ – the very notion of turning in seemed toxic to me. I realized that I had just endured the most extraordinary day of my life. How could I just shimmy under some covers and let the dreams come?

It hurt to think of sleep.

It hurt to stay awake.

I grinned like a mad dog and gripped the black iron of the balcony railing. It felt cool, solid, and eternal beneath my fingertips.

There came a wood-hollow knocking, barely audible, from behind me. Four quiet raps and then a tentative squeaking of hinges. I heard the light flutter of a familiar voice.

"Linus? I – I'm terribly sorry. Are ya' awake?"

Malora Lon's words floated through the bedroom.

When I turned to face her, Malora stood halfway into the room. Her eyes were as large as I'd yet seen on a person.

"Err," she murmured. "May I come in?"

"Pffft," I sputtered, which became, "Hahahaha!" I shrugged and rolled my now-itching right shoulder. "Looks like you already made that decision, chica."

Though it was hard to tell from where I stood, I believe Malora reddened. She certainly looked mortified.

"If – I mean – aye. Oh, if – if you wish for me to leave," she stammered.

I shook my head and beckoned her onto the balcony. "Ah, c'mon. You're already here. What's up? What did you want?"

Buoyant with relief, Malora crossed her arms and ambled out through the open doors. In the moonlight, her hair glimmered darkly. She looked out over the town and made an appreciative noise.

"I came to see how your stitches hold," Malora said. "I wanted to see if they can wait another day before I pull 'em out, or if you need more time."

"Oh."

"Before you went to sleep, especially," she nodded.

"I doubt that you'll be able to rip them out tonight," I said. The annoying, stabby finger that had been probing the spear wound all afternoon now reappeared. "After all, I didn't exactly rest today. That can't help things at all."

"'Tis true. However, you drank another dose o' the Red today, didn't ya'?"

I conceded that I had. Thus, I acquiesced to Malora bringing me inside and inspecting her healer's handiwork by the wobbling light of the lamp. After a couple minutes of her fingers gently spidering over my face, she sighed and put her hands on her hips.

"I'm sad to say that I shan't be takin' these out tonight. Tomorrow at the earliest, but most likely another day or two." She seemed disappointed in this outcome, as if she were somehow to blame for the punishment my body had undergone throughout the day.

"Eh, don't worry about it. Where I come from, stitches would stay in a gash like this for weeks. A couple days won't kill me." I motioned. "Want to go back out?"

As we crossed back to the open balcony, Malora said, "It sounds so barbaric, Loss An-jell-ess."

"Hey, we do all right."

She shook her head and crossed her hands to her shoulders, as if a chill had run through her body. Malora said, "I don't know. If you can't even heal like us, what can your country's medicine really be like? What of its alchemy and magic?" A meaningful, penetrating look. Seeing that my silence meant that I had no good answer to give, Malora nodded and said, "Do ya' see? It must have been a boon and a blessin' that you found your way here, Linus Olsen."

"Or the will of the gods," I said drolly.

"Exactly!" She grew a springy, delighted expression. Malora extended a delicately boned, calloused hand and swept it out over the balcony. A gesture that encompassed the whole of Oloro, from the inn to out beyond the walls.

"This is all for you, you know," Malora said softly.

I chuckled ruefully. "I don't see why. I'm just some guy who got lucky today. One missed step and I would have been dead."

"You're the Hero, Linus. The Link."

"I guess."

A finger nudged me in the rib. "Come, now. Don't let that big-headed alchemist make you believe otherwise. You're the Hero o' legend, Linus. You're the man who'll save us all."

"Heh!" I folded myself onto the railing, pressing my weight into it. "How do you know that, Malora? How _could _you know?" I said. It came out more bitterly than I had intended.

"Because ya' saved _me_," she whispered.

I looked at her then – looked into the sincerity in those big eyes of hers – and my demeanor all but melted. I smiled sheepishly, feeling flushed.

"I, I guess I did," I said.

Malora spoke emphatically. "You _did_."

To this, I only nodded. For a time, which felt like a descending fog, neither of us spoke. We just stood and leaned there, taking in the atmosphere of the deepening hour. On the street below the Silver Shell Inn's windows, a pair of women held each other's hands as they zigzagged over the cobblestones. They giggled and hiccupped and moved with an innocent lack of concern for their drunkenness. Somewhere, someone played slow and seemingly random notes on a banjo.

"How long have you borne the mark o' the Triforce?" Malora suddenly asked.

A moment's hesitation. God help me, I almost blurted out that the mark was a tattoo. The manic urge actually rose up and itched at my vocal cords.

"Were you born with it?" Malora prodded.

"Um, uh," I said. "No. Uh, I mean – no, I wasn't born with it. It, um. I've had it for a little over four years, now. I think."

At least it wasn't an _out-and-out _lie.

"Truthfully?" Malora marveled.

"Yeah. I just . . . woke up one day, and there it was." I affected a godawful little laugh. "Damnedest thing!"

Okay: _That _was obviously a falsehood.

"I guess . . . I guess that about makes sense. It appearin' when it did, I mean." She nodded solemnly. "That's about when Ganon started his campaign, after all. The both of you must've woken to the call o' the Triforce at about the same time."

"I thought that Ganon's campaign started five years ago."

She gave me a noncommittal look and haughtily said, "It would still make sense, wouldn't it?"

"Sure," I sighed.

It seemed that her fascination with the subject was endless. Malora pressed, "Did no one ask you about it? No one wondered about where and how it came from?"

"I kept it covered," I lied.

We paused as a five-man troop of militia, clattering through the night in their mail and surcoats, passed below. I wondered if there were still militiamen posted at the Silver Shell's doors.

"Why?" Malora demanded. "Wouldn't you and your kin be happy? Was it not an honor and a blessin'?"

I said, "Well. See. Remember how I told you that, back in my country, I thought that the, um, stories about Hyrule were just that?"

She nodded quickly, seemingly getting where I was going with this little fabrication.

"When the mark first appeared, it scared me. Scared the shit out of me, actually. I wasn't sure if it was even real. I worried that it might just be my imagination. Made me worry about my sanity, see? I grew up hearing the legends of Hyrule – of Link and Ganon and the Triforce. And suddenly this fucking thing just pops out of nowhere? Christ, I thought I'd gone bugshit. It terrified me down to my bones."

With a start, it came to me that I had technically not told another lie. Replace "mark" with "Master Sword" and I had just spun a remarkably candid summary of the days leading up till now.

With a newfound sense of confidence, I kept going. "So I hid it, even though at times I wanted to show it off and see once and for all what it meant. I didn't come to Hyrule thinking I was the Hero. It's not like I could just say, 'Shit, this totally means you're fuckin' Link.' That would be crazy in of itself, right? People get dragged off to the nuthatch for a shitload less, that's for sure."

Malora looked a mixture of perplexed and indignant. With her own version of the night's cocked eyebrow, she asked, "How could you have not known that you are the Link?"

My first thought was: I'm not the Hero. I'm no Link. As they had done since I had arrived in Hyrule, my lips seemed to move of their own accord. "Have any of the Heroes ever just _known_?"

This appeared to give Malora pause. I know it did me. Shit: _What if_?

I ended up scratching at my stitches, annoyed at myself for doing so, and said, "So, yeah. I'm still a little blown away by all of this. I haven't had time to think about it at all. For the time being, I'm just rolling with it and hoping that it all works out for the best.

"I'm still not sure about the whole saving the world thing, though," I muttered.

The redhead regarded me with lidded eyes. "I have faith, Linus. I've seen what ya' can do. You're a brave, headstrong man. I believe in you."

"Aw, shucks," I drawled.

"We need you, Linus Olsen. Hyrule needs you." Malora's voice had gone low, quiet, liquid. I turned to her and found her face in moonlit profile. She stared out past Oloro and to the dark-edged horizon.

"These are bad times, Linus. You saw that. We may seem normal at first, like the common man is getting' by just dandy. We still trade an' grow an' travel an' play. But . . ." she trailed off in a whispery sigh. "You weren't here during the offensives four years ago. The Battle o' the Titan and the Battle o' the Buttes. You weren't around to see everyone in a panic, absolutely sure that a hundred-thousand moblins were gonna come chargin' over the hills. Just last year, during the Great Defection, my family huddled up in the house for a week while Ingo an' the hands staked out the roofs with bows n' arrows."

Her gaze was far away, lost somewhere in the pantheon of alien stars. "We're all just puttin' on faces. Trying to act like everything's all right because there ain't any big fights up north and the legions have Ganon's armies penned in. Try not to listen to the rumors o' slavery and massacres north o' the line. We try not to think about the worse and worse hoodoo that Ganon's people cook up every day. Try to pretend that there ain't raiders out on the plains." Malora let a tiny smile perk the corners of her lips. "Though I wonder if those hooligans will try to mess with us at all after today."

It hadn't really been me, though, I wanted to say. The town's militia had done most of the work. The MVP Award of the evening actually went to one lucky and heroic steam valve.

"The point is," Malora proceeded, "that we folk o' Hyrule have yearned for the revelation o' the Link for years. They dream of the war endin' overnight. Though people walk and talk like they're soldierin' on, they're really just frightened. Tired, anxious, an' scared."

A woman screamed in the dark corners of Oloro. Before I could jump up in alarm, her howl melted into a river of raucous laughter, soon joined by other chuckling voices.

Malora scooted along the railing, coming a little closer to me. "Can I tell you a secret, Linus?"

"Okay," I said.

She smirked and said, "Ah, so 'okay' means 'yes'?"

I shrugged. "Kind of?"

"Then you don't mind?"

"No, I don't."

Her breathing deepened and she hung her head, red bangs falling across her eyes.

"_I _was scared," she murmured. "So scared. Every day. I woke up scared and went to sleep scared. I had nightmares about moblins an' all the other kinds o' monsters they say Ganon brews up in the forbidden provinces. I heard every war story and wondered when it was goin' to come to me and my family. I imagined my sisters and mother and father butchered by animals, an' I . . ." Malora sniffled. "I wept myself to sleep more than once, Linus. Felt panic at my back all the time. Got to be afraid o' bein' afraid – that I might just crack an' let everyone see what I really was."

"God. That's horrible." I blinked. "But completely understandable. It's stressful."

"I was a coward," Malora said decisively.

I shook my head. "Seriously. You know how fucking scared I was today? How much I wanted to just curl into a ball in a corner and hope that those moblin fucks couldn't find me?"

"That's different, though. It was a real thing you faced. You stood up to it and defeated it. I jumped at every shadow and gust o' wind like it were full o' hungry poes."

"Then how about a closer example? What about me and the, uh, mark? You think that it made any sense for me to not just show someone the damn thing? Of course not. But fear paralyzed me. I spent a lot of time agonizing over it. It's not like you were bedridden, right?"

"Aye . . ." she tentatively said.

"So, you totally worked through it. That's not cowardly. I've known people who reacted to stuff like this by, well, checking out entirely. Giving up on everything they had hoped for and retreating from society like hermit crabs."

The reference seemed to puzzle her, but Malora nodded anyway.

"What you say is true," she said. "But I must tell you," her dress rustled as she slid farther down the railing, "that I _was _scared. I'm not anymore."

"Oh?"

"When the raiders came down on us yesterday, it was like one o' my nightmares had come alive. The panic and terror that I had felt for years just burst up out o' me. I felt like the world were endin' around my ears. So I called for help. For someone. Anyone."

My heart jack-hammered as I watched her speak.

"And ya' know what happened?" Her grin was at once guileless and devilish. "Someone came to save me. Appeared out o' the plains like a djinn, he did. He had a mouth like a bandit in a grog den," (at this, I couldn't help but laugh embarrassedly), "but by _Din _was he brave. He confronted these monsters – the things that had roared through my nightmares for so long – as if they weren't nothin' more than a pack o' mangy dogs. He fought like a madman with 'em and killed a few in the deal. This here man, he proved that the things that I had feared were just flesh an' blood, like me. They could be destroyed just as easy they destroyed me an' my family in dreams.

"And this man, this hero? Whenever I looked up from where I was hidin', he had this . . . sword. It was kind o' a funny weapon. Real old-lookin', and it flashed blue whenever he swung it. Blue . . . an' gold."

"Goddamn," I chuckled. "You knew it was the Master Sword all along, didn't you?" A jolt of understanding zipped up my spine. "Hey. That's why you were so keen to get into my bag last night! While I was off draining the dragon, I mean."

Though her color was blanched in the pale nightglow, I could tell that it was probably nine parts blush-red to one part skin-white. Another of her digits struck out and poked my belly. "Oy! I . . . didn't _know_. I suspected. I never got a good look at the thing until tonight. But the weirdness o' that first time I saw ya' lingered with me."

She shook her head. "It ain't important, anyhow. What _is _important is that after I saw you strike down those snouts, I felt the fear just . . . drain away. Like it had been a big abscess, full o' putrefaction, an' you appearin' like you did had lanced it. Left it clean. By the time I fell asleep last night, I weren't scared no more. For the first time in years, I had happy dreams."

Sandals slipped over the floor of the balcony. Malora came within feet of me. Close enough to feel her body heat.

"I ain't afraid because o' you. Not anymore. Never again." She whispered, "You saved me, Linus. You saved me."

Malora arched forward and kissed me. Her lips were dry. They tasted of soap and spice.

When she pulled away, she wore an expression part longing and part a peculiar sort of sadness. At her shoulders, the night pooled like the hems of a cloak.

"What . . ." I managed. "What was that for?"

She did not move. Her expression did not change. "You seem so lonely, Linus Olsen. Are ya' lonely?"

My mouth hung open. Humid wind slithered up my back. Moonlight collected on my tongue and teeth.

"Yes," I whispered.

And I moved in to kiss her back.

I won't lie: I knew even then that I should slow it down. Maybe even stop. I knew that I shouldn't open my lips; knew that I shouldn't meet her tongue with my own; knew that I really, really shouldn't move my hand from her back to her breast. Despite the day behind me and the exhaustion that clung to me like a shroud, I must admit that in those moments I was quite rational.

She just seemed so _eager_.

So, when Malora pressed into me, pulled me back into the room, and slipped a hand down to my pants' zipper, well . . . I just didn't have the heart to stop her.


	21. 21

**21**

I felt like I had somehow stumbled into that old joke about the farmer and the stranded traveler.

Hello, sir. Car trouble, you say? That's too bad, sir. No sir, ain't got a phone here. Why, sure you can stay the night! I wouldn't have you walkin' into town out in this weather. We have an extra bedroom in the back of the house. I swear that it's no trouble. Now, let me introduce you to my _three beautiful virgin daughters._

Heh. Of course, it wasn't really like that. No car; only one daughter; no virginity; and, hopefully, no shotgun comeuppance come dawn. All the same, the confluence struck me as mildly hilarious. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep making me loopy.

I laughed to myself and sighed drowsily. By then, I once more leaned against the balcony railing, my heart slowing and my skin cooling beneath the stars.

It was rather later than my previous stroll outside. Though a few ultra-drunken gatherings still hooted and bellowed through the night, the streets of Oloro were largely deserted. As the moon headed west, more and more stars surfaced in the dark zenith of the sky. An owl called. The night held warm and wet and sulfur-tinged.

For all my drooping fatigue, I knew that I still wouldn't be able to sleep. Not for a while, yet. That tingling ghost-excitement still rattled in my elbows and knees. My tongue ran along the back of my teeth. My fingers fidgeted in weird, half-conscious spasms. My brain hummed electric as it turned over the events of the day.

This. Fucking. Day.

My first full day living among people and places I had just yesterday thought to be legends. Fictions. Playthings.

I'd seen and learned so much. Looked to vistas unknowable even in my dreams. Chased and was chased. Slipped in warm water and hot blood. Felt the bite of steel. Confronted pain and panic and sheer horror. Been lauded; cheered; offered prayers. I had emerged something utterly different than before, although for all the world I felt exactly the same.

And then there was . . . the other thing. Malora. What had just ended. What I had risen from, slipping on clothes, walking outside to taste the air and feel the sweat evaporate from my skin.

It had been so . . . _strange_. And good. But strange all the same.

Mind you, not "strange" in the "tie me up and shove a candlestick up my ass" sense of the word; rather, fooling around with a Hylian only served to accentuate the cultural divide that I was still blindly feeling out. It gave the experience an air of almost surreal whimsy. Even in these intense and private moments, I continued to learn more about the world into which I had fallen.

At no time was this more evident than our unceremonious version of The Removal of Clothes. After we had signaled our mutual desire to do more than just twist tongues, we careered into the bedroom still locked in each other's arms, pausing only to shut the balcony door and draw curtains. Our path crossed to the bed and both of us began to tug the garments off our bodies.

As my underwear shimmied past my knees, Malora froze suddenly and her eyes slowly went wide. "Oh, Linus," she breathed. She bit her lip and stared, unblinking. "Oh Linus. You, your – oh gods," she drew a shuddery breath. "You're _scarred_." Malora's face rose to meet mine. She trembled and looked as if she were going to cry. "What horrible th-thing happened to you? Who _did this_?"

My eyes trailed downward. There I was, standing at full attention. Back up now, to meet her frightened expression. Back down. Hello, penis. Ready for a night on the town, are we? Fantastic. And back up, to the girl sprawled awkwardly over the edge of the bed, her dress pulled up to her armpits and her pert breasts pale in the lamplight.

What in holy fuck was she talking about?

I looked back down at my cock, gaping slightly. My mind fragmented between abject confusion, bulldozing lust, and the far-off worry that I might go flaccid at any second. And then it came to me, hard and fast as an axe to the skull: I was circumcised.

"What? I – whoa." I worked my boxers the rest of the way off my bony legs. "Have you – have you never seen – I mean," I sputtered. She looked at me with big, perplexed eyes. "Have you really never heard of circumcision before?"

"Sir-cum-sih-shun?" she tested. Her lips formed each syllable with an obsessive's precision. It seemed to click for her a moment later. "Circumcision? I –" her brow knitted up, "I haven't. Is it . . . is it very common in Los Angeles?" The thought appeared to repulse her.

"I guess it is. Kind of."

"Is it religious, then? Somethin' you do to," she shuddered, "appease your gods?"

I shook my head, hesitated, and then said, "It used to be. Well – it still is, for some people. Not my family."

"Then why do it at all?" Malora keened

"Tradition, I guess. I didn't have much of choice in the matter."

"It's like something a _bokoblin _would do." Malora sighed darkly. "What an awful, barbarous place you come from, Linus."

With a bit of a dramatic flourish, she pulled her dress the rest of the way over her head, folded it with deft movements, and dropped it on top of my duffle bag. She wore nothing underneath save a pair of short, blue-striped bloomers.

Before I could try to elaborate, Malora sat straight and stroked a slow, hesitant hand over the subject in question. A pleasant shiver rolled through my back and thighs.

"No lack o' sensation though, I see," Malora smiled.

I chuckled, "Not that I've ever noticed."

Reclining back onto the bed, she hooked a thumb over the top of her bloomers with one hand and beckoned with the other. "Come here. No worries, tonight. Let me help you forget the kind o' ugly place that would do this to a man. Welcome to Hyrule, Linus."

We tumbled over the bed then, kissing and exploring, joints trembling with adrenaline. I felt like a teenager again, doing this for the very first time. Awkward, fumbling; doubting every muscle twitch and lip movement; going ahead and performing each action anyway. A Surface Me of pure id undercut by an Other Me of distilled neurosis.

"Careful. Careful. Ya' don't want to reopen those wounds," she whispered.

At some beautiful point, Malora rose to blow out the lamp that still flickered in the corner, lazy strings of vapor rising from its vent. I rested my chin on my hand and watched the honey-colored light play over her features.

While there were no freckles on Malora's breasts (as I had imagined), they speckled her shoulders and grew in mysterious constellations along the muscular, crescent moon dimples above her buttocks. Where the sun had not touched, her skin was white as marble. Her nipples were coral pink and curved upward slightly, as if in question. The scimitar points of her ears emerged like pale fins from the fall of her hair.

Then we swam in darkness. A moment's total blindness. I felt her wiggle cautiously onto the bed. Her fingers grazed my shoulder blade. I found her back as my eyes adjusted and traced a thumb down her spine.

A few seconds later, I broke away from a kiss, blinking. A sharp, startling wad of dread had dropped into my gut. Anticipation kneaded every muscle in my body. Before Malora could ask what was wrong, I blurted, "Should I – I mean. God. Should I be – can't believe I'm saying this – should I be using protection?"

I expected the question to fall on deaf ears – those same ears that couldn't even bear the _concept _of circumcision. Instead, I heard Malora make a mildly frustrated sound and sit back on her haunches. Her silhouette ran fingers into the shadow-garnet tangle of her hair.

She said, "Don't worry. I take a preventative."

"A what?"

In the dim light, I couldn't tell if her smile was sly, embarrassed, or both. "'Madame Mim's Preventative Potion for Discerning Ladies.' If I drink a dose each month, it keeps me from becomin' with – well. Do you understand?"

I wonder to this day if she could make out my expression of abject, flap-mouthed astonishment. Eventually, I managed to reattach my jaw and nodded tentatively.

"Yeah. Okay." I took her hand into mine. Her touch radiated heat and catalyzed something like lightning in my bones. I said, "Then, should we –?"

Malora giggled silkily. "Yes. Of course."

And so it went – faster now, in my haste skipping steps that shouldn't usually be skipped, and soon enough we both twisted atop the bed sheets naked, and she was spreading apart her thighs and I was wobbling and trying to line up with the shadowy cleft beneath her wiry patch of rust-red hair. And I wasn't thinking, wasn't doing anything but feeling; wasn't anything but the tingling shiver and sweat and the combined heat our bodies. Focused only on our twined fingers and each pair of nipples brushing the other. Didn't pause, didn't hesitate. Just guided myself forward slightly, nudged, nestled, and then shoved myself into her with all the thought of a bull maddened with estrus.

And it was good, it was _amazing_, it was – it was – _exquisite_. And all the sensations came flooding back, and it was fine, it was _exquisite_, and and –

And it was so exquisite that after only three joyful thrusts, my thighs and buttocks clenched as I pulled out and ejaculated across her belly.

I heard Malora sigh. Her hand wisped out and brushed my hair. I blinked in the dark. I panted, body buzzing and dripping sweat.

"Sorry," I whispered. "Dammit. Sorry. Sorry."

In this regard, not so strange after all.

Malora rose from bed, located a towel sitting next to the wash basin, and set about wiping herself clean. Her shadow-crafted form undulated and then slipped to my side. She pressed the sticky towel into my hand and urged me to also clean up.

"Those stains," she muttered, "are an absolute nightmare to get out."

Thus wiped down, I settled against one of the down pillows piled at my back. Malora clambered back onto the bed, laid her head on the pillow next to mine, and turned sideways to face me. Her eye glinted a faint blue in the gloaming. She smiled, nudged closer, and let loose a resigned sigh.

"S'all right. At least I know you like me," she breathed. Fingers pressed against my brow, then my cheek.

"Well, yeah. I'd say _that_'s true," I said.

We both laughed quietly.

At first, I thought I might become that most stereotypical of men – the kind that rolls over and falls asleep immediately after orgasm. The warm darkness stank sweetly of sweat and slick hair and semen. The covers tangled about my ankles. Nothing but two sets of breathing held the air. I felt my eyelids begin to gain mass, to sink, to flutter.

Then Malora poked me in the ribs and began to speak. I shifted position to listen and the fugue passed.

We lay there in the dark for a time, talking. I told her about my family – about Lira, my mother, and my father. I ended up talking for a long time about Dad. About his life, his vitality, his strange little habits. And then about his declining health, his diagnosis, his death.

In turn, Malora spoke of her younger brother, Kamus. When he had been four years old and she six, he had been trampled by a crazed stallion that had escaped from a round-up. He had lingered in a coma for almost two weeks before dying.

"Back then," she explained, "things like the Red weren't out in the provinces yet. You could get a tiny bit of it – or somethin' like it – if you was rich and could send for it. Father tried. Didn't come in time, though. Doubt it would've even helped." Malora exhaled shakily. Turned as she was, I felt her hot breath on my shoulder. "Kamus's skull was pretty well stomped in. It was amazing that he lasted as long as he did."

Her sad voice dropped. "I barely remember what he looked like."

When I next spoke, it was with an indefinable ache.

"What hurt most," I said, "was that it was only after he died that I realized how much I had never told him. It's not as if . . . I mean, it's not like I didn't have time to tell him I loved him. Because I did. There was plenty of time for that, even though the cancer killed him so quickly it was cruel.

"My dad – I mean, my father – was a big guy. As tall as me, but bigger shoulders, built arms. Strong as a goddamn ox. He grew up in rural Minnesota, out on a farm his father's fathers had owned since God knows when. After college, but before he met my mother, he went through this real redneck phase where he moved back to his parents' land and worked as a construction foreman for the local water department. Did that for a few years. During that time, he had to chop all his firewood by hand. Out there in the cold of winter or those goddamn muggy Minnesota summers. Every day, give or take. He never lost that strength, even when the cancer had basically rendered him brain-dead. It took three orderlies to hold him down when he had a seizure."

I sighed, "I know it sounds like I'm rambling but . . . well, maybe I am. I guess my point is that I admired him a lot. How strong and stubborn he could be. How solid he seemed. I know that he went through some rough shit when he was a kid, but he managed to persevere over it and become a good, caring man.

"Which is not to say that we didn't fight," I chuckled. "Man, I was a shitty kid to him sometimes. When he told us that we were moving from St. Paul to Los Angeles, man – I was only nine, but the words that came out of my mouth could have offended a merchant marine. Refused to talk to him for a week. For his part, he seemed more amused than angry. I eventually forgave him – the job that took us out of Minnesota was the opportunity of a lifetime."

Malora nodded murkily, though I suspect she understood about half of what I was saying.

"Of course, I _did _manage to piss him off from time to time. When I was sixteen, he threatened to send me off to reform school when he found my stash of pot."

Malora cut in, "Pot?"

"Ah. Yeah. Um: Marijuana? Cannabis?"

"I've never heard of it."

Instead of questioning her more about hemp – which I knew had to be grown here – I continued, "Well, it doesn't matter, really. I'm getting off-track anyway. The point, I guess, was that I never actually told my father that I admired him like that. I never told him how much his constant strength and fairness meant to me. No matter what happened as I grew up, he was there to help in his way.

"Then he was just _gone_. It was like a lighthouse had gone dark for me. I still had Lira and . . . In the end, it wasn't the same. Even though I could have gone on with my life, it was like my compass had disappeared. And I had never been able to tell my dad that that's what he really meant to me."

I fell silent, suddenly embarrassed by all my blathering. I wondered if Malora had fallen asleep.

Instead of snores, Malora rolled toward me and traced a finger across my chest. It moved in a smooth, unhurried figure-eight over exposed skin and the rough surface of my bandages. "What about your mother, Linus?"

Something pinched in my chest. I said, "We . . . I mean, my mom and I. Well. We don't talk much."

"How much is that?"

"About two or three times a year, I think. Maybe four."

Air hissed through her teeth. "Ah, _Linus_. You really should take care o' your ma better than that. Especially since she lost a husband."

The muscles in my neck twitched. "See, that's the problem. She remarried."

"Oh." Her finger stopped moving. "I take it you don't approve of her new husband, then? Is that it?"

"No – I mean . . ." I squinted at nothing and thought about my next words carefully. I restarted with, "This isn't something I like to think about, much less talk about."

"Well then –"

I forged ahead. Damn the torpedoes. "Mom got hitched about three-and-a-half or four months after Dad died. She ended up marrying one of my dad's best friends. A guy named Roger Raynor."

A sober shake of the head. "That _is _quite soon, especially considerin' a wife's proper mourning period. But it was good of your father's friend to take care of his widow. If he hadn't, it might have fallen to you."

"Maybe," I said. "Mom had a pretty decent job, actually. I think that she could have made it work, especially with Dad's pension. That wasn't the issue, though."

"Oh?"

"The thing is: When Roger started hanging around my mom more and more, Lira and I heard rumors through the extended network of our parents' friends." I hated the next part. Hated it down to my bone marrow. "They said that Roger and Mom had been having an affair. Some said it was from just before Dad got sick; others said they had been at it off and on for years. It didn't matter. The moment they got engaged, Lira and I lost our shit.

"You have to understand that we were in a really black place, then. Especially me. What Mom had done, whether the stories were true of not, felt like a complete betrayal."

"Were they true? Those . . . tales?"

"I don't know. I don't think I'll ever know," I said. "They just made things so much worse. It was too much. I was selfish and stupid, to be sure. I mean, it wasn't like she wasn't going through the same thing we were. Worse, even. She needed someone to lean on and we could only be there for her so much of the time. Of course she would find some other way to deal. Find someone else to help her, too.

"But did I think of that? No. All I knew was that my mother had stabbed my dad in the back. I knew that what she was doing – this hideous attempt at being _happy_ – was awful beyond words." I swallowed. "So I confronted her without telling Lira. I confronted her and said some shit that I will never, ever be able to take back."

"Ah, _no_, Linus . . ."

"For a little bit, it was like each of us didn't exist to the other. She and Roger moved out to Florida. They more or less retired with Roger's investments. I dropped out of school during that period, for lack of money and some stubborn, stupid resistance to the idea of loans. She was the one who tried to mend the bridge, but I ignored her like an asshole. I didn't speak to her for a full year. During that time, Lira patched it up with her. I eventually got over my idiot pride and started talking to her again, but it's never been the same."

Another lapse into silence. I could feel Malora's somewhat stunned body language – a pulling inward, a reticence, an apprehension.

I slipped fingers over my forehead and wiped away a drizzle of sweat. I said, "Man, let's talking about something else. This shit's bringing me down."

That brief, clumsy tension melted away almost instantly. I let Malora talk for a while. She told me about her sisters, Romani and Cremia. Though I almost cackled at their names, the sense of video game-based déjà vu was starting to become old hat. For about an hour, we curled closer together as she spoke of "Romlon" the ten-year-old tomboy and "Cremlon," seventeen and already making grand plans for her eventual takeover the Lon Ranch. Malora also talked about her mother, Farah, who apparently ran the day-to-day business of the dairy side of the Lon business and worked hard to keep Tash's many boondoggles from blowing up in the family's collective face.

Soon enough, the conversation ran dry. We held each other in the woolly gloom. Her hands traced up and down my arms. Fingers brushed my tattoo with shaky, eroticized awe. I felt a familiar, tingling warmth bloom through my chest and pour into my guts. Her cheek settled into the hollow between my neck and my shoulder.

"Hey," I said.

"Mm?"

"We could try again," I whispered. "See if we can't make it more enjoyable for you."

She pressed her lips against my cheek and made an inscrutable sound that was half-purr, half-giggle. "You're sweet, but no. I'd best be headin' back to my own room for the night."

"Oh."

She shook her head and shrugged. "Linus: You're beautiful and fine . . . but, even though it's the modern age, folk still look down on an unmarried girl sharin' a bed with an unmarried man."

"I understand."

"Do you?"

I grunted in annoyance. "Of course. I do. Seriously."

Even in the quarter-light of the room, I caught the white flash of her grin.

"I'm glad," she breathed. She kissed me with an exacting tenderness. "Good night, my hero."

But: When she stood to dress, I didn't feel like a hero at all. Just a man. A meager, selfish, inadequate man.

We exchanged hushed good nights. Malora paused warily at the door and then slipped out into the hallway, practiced as a cat burglar. I listened to her footfalls grow faint, then nonexistent.

So. Back to where I started: Out on the balcony, arms folded across metal chill to the touch, staring in exhausted and exhilarated contemplation at nothing, everything. The hour grew so very, very late. Sleep all but impossible. A fast slurry of examinations, ideas, memories, worries, and near-hallucinatory images rushed through my head. The more I tried to tamp it down, the more the torrent seemed to gush dreams and experiences across the inside of my skull.

When I did focus, it was on the predictable.

Just how pathetic are you, man? I mean, I know it's been a while, but _Jesus_. You could have tried to at least think of geometry problems or cross-country training, or fuckin' death. _Something_. That was some pretty weak shit you brought, bro. And then, _We could try again_? Really? No wonder she beat feet.

Shit – when was the last time I had gone for two, anyway? One-and-done was all I could handle these days. Not that it happened often enough – or with great enough enthusiasm – that I even gave it a try.

When _was _the last time I had pulled off a double-header? My brow furrowed. The stitches on my face and side itched. It felt like years. Had to be years. But when, exactly?

My eyelids sprang open. I muttered a soft, "Shit."

Oh.

Jennifer Foster.

Well. In the fullness of time, it was inevitable. Get me in a romantic or just plain nostalgic mood, and my thoughts always seemed to wander back to Jenny, as if she were a landmark I looked for when I got lost in my own musings. I suppose that I shouldn't be surprised: After all, she was my first . . . well . . . everything.

During middle school, I had sprouted from a weedy little dork into a tall, gawky sort of nerd. Seething with pointless hormonal rebellion; sporting wispy hair along my upper lip; forehead dotted with pimples. I had an appetite for the new, as if the change in me needed to be more than just physical. As such, I quit my half-enthusiastic tae kwon do lessons, which actually didn't sadden either of my parents one bit. I proceeded to join Pine Union High School's cross country running team the first day possible.

Marathon running defined my years in high school even after I fell in with the local circle of stoners late in my sophomore year. If video games (_The Legend of Zelda_, especially) were my life's defining awe, then running in those days was my life's defining accomplishment. Waking with the sun; engaging in the rituals of running shoes and high socks; feeling the cool morning air rush in and out of my lungs; the rich burn of testing one's endurance. Beautiful.

Jennifer Anne Foster was another member of Pine Union's cross country team. The day I first met her, she came loping out of the school's side entrance in her shorts and uniform. Her legs were like a gazelle's. Her face was long and angled, but not unpleasant; her eyes the color of strong tea; her body as whippet-thin as mine and damned near as tall. She was manically tying her cocoa-colored hair back as she ran, convinced that she was late for the team's first practice run.

It didn't happen overnight. We were team and classmates first, then occasional acquaintances, and eventually genuine friends. In our second year, I asked Jenny out to the Homecoming Dance as (what I said was) a kind of joke between friends. As I walked her back to her house after the dance's close, I realized that I was probably developing a real crush on her.

Of course I didn't act on it. Not immediately, at least. We had a kind of minor, very high school falling-out when Jenny discovered that I had started smoking pot with Eric Chung that April. We patched it up soon after – when I gave up ganja at my dad's urging – and the whole thing felt silly indeed. When junior year's Homecoming came 'round, this time I asked Jenny out with the caveat that we, "Go get dinner and see a movie sometime or something. You know."

Those auspicious words were where it started – where _we _started. Weirdly enough, we made it work. We shared classes, a sport, and even started absorbing each other's interests. Jenny had always had the touch of the perfectionist geek to her, so reintroducing her to video games yielded hilarious and effective results. In turn, she helped me focus further on schoolwork, my physical training regimen, and preparing myself for college. We ran half-marathons, went to movies, bitched about teachers, drove from one end of Los Angeles to the other, tandem-played _The Legend of Zelda: Majora's __Mask_, and huddled together during the rain.

And we explored, of course. Our boundaries; each other. Hers was my first kiss – though I, sadly, was not hers. There were other milestones that I could reach with Jenny. A week or two after my seventeenth birthday, Jenny and I snuck into the sweltering night-confines of my room and quietly took each other's virginity. It was a sudden, slippery, stumbling thing. Quick, nervous, and intense. Try as I might, I can't remember the exact date.

Another night bird cawed from a rooftop. I blinked and shook my head. A flutter of wing beats.

That's where I came in, huh? All this wandering around the catacombs of old memories. The question: When was the last time you took it down to China Town twice in one night?

After that first explosive consummation, Jenny and I took to fucking as much as we could manage. The new sense of uninhibited sexuality was both invigorating and intoxicating. We took some daring, not-at-all-advisable risks in the pursuit of each other's flesh. And of course, we managed to have sex twice in a row more than once. The mere sight of her flat, acne-dotted ass drove me to Brobdingnagian jolts of lust. On one blurred summer evening, when Mom and Dad were out of town (and Jenny had somehow forgotten to mention this to her parents), we performed the act three times in a row. A display of the sort of foolhardy virility that only teenagers can achieve. We were relentless.

I sighed. Pollen scents whirled past.

Jenny and I remained together through the rest of high school. We made plans. We said, "I love you," and "I want to spend my life with you," and other such bits of foolishness one utters at seventeen.

Life is complicated. It has a habit of setting little traps while you're looking away. Jenny and I had planned to attend the same college come graduation: The University of California at L.A. Architecture for me; Mechanical Engineering for her. But – unsurprisingly, in hindsight – Jenny had always been smarter than me. She would have been class valedictorian if some other jerk hadn't taken one more honors class. As our high school careers wound down, she won a very generous, long-shot scholarship to MIT. I know now that it was the chance of a lifetime – one that she couldn't possibly pass up.

I all but begged her not to go. It was a pathetic display. The depressingly familiar wail of the lovesick.

Of course it didn't work out. Jenny moved to the opposite side of the continent and I moved across town. We attempted the long-distance thing and it proceeded stiltedly for a few months. I tried to distract myself with marathon training and diving into class work, but I eventually gave into the green genie that lurked about the dorms. Soon enough, an inevitable emotional chasm widened between us. One night, during a long phone call, we both fell in.

I can't remember how we came to the point where I howled into the receiver, "God, do you even fucking care? I bet you're fucking cheating on me, too!"

It's all too easy to remember her quiet, icy reply: "No. But there is someone else. And I'm thinking of telling him 'yes.'"

A week later, we broke up. By telephone, of course. Plane tickets are expensive.

Below me, a pair of motile stars zipped over the boulevards of Oloro. Fairies out late. I liked to think that they chased each other in play.

Truth be told, I didn't think about Jennifer much anymore. After we had separated, there had been a period when I heard nothing of her except through mutual friends. We eventually reconnected by e-mail and worked our way up to the level of friendship we had nurtured early at Pine Union. Our communications had become scattered due to my personal computer's recent heat death, but we more or less kept in touch. She worked for an industrial firm, designing motors and pistons and God knows what else. It was fairly certain that her boyfriend of two years would soon pop the all-important question.

Jennifer Foster – the first girl I ever gave my heart to. The only woman to whom I'd ever said, "I love you."

This kind of night set my mind trundling back. With love came sex, and it was all too easy to get caught up in the solipsism of tracing the steps, fumbles, and rampant stupidity of it all. All too easy to linger on the individual moments of life in flagrante.

After Jenny, romance was a bumbling and episodic affair. There were certainly more one-night stands than relationships; more failed blind dates than genuine connections. What "relationships" I had were short. Some perfunctory; others so brilliant that they had to flare out like fireworks. As is appropriate to wretched men of sparse sexual activity, I tended to tick off the erotic interludes in my head as if taking inventory of a collection of strange, nostalgic memorabilia.

I tried dating during the remainder of my college career, but I was generally flummoxed by the scene and its innumerable vagaries. I ended up sleeping with a fierce, intellectually intimidating graduate student named Renee Abernathy. We did this off and on for a month, at which point she tired of it and sent me packing.

I actually didn't get laid again until after dropping out of UCLA and taking to recreational drug use full-time. I fooled around with Amy Schmidt on a futon, though that could be chalked up to the E we were rolling on more than any charm on my part.

Then came Sarah Vincent, the sun-freckled surfer blonde who balled me in a beach house in Malibu.

There was Maria, last name unknown, who had demanded imperiously that I _fuck her harder_, only to burst into tears the next morning and admit that she already had a boyfriend.

Rachel Raines arrived in my life. A foot shorter than me, built like an elf from a fable, and possessed of the energy of three-dozen suns. She was newly arrived in L.A. and contentedly between things. We gravitated naturally and set to getting physical with a quickness. Both of us were stoner-nerds generally adrift in life – I with increasing despair and she without a care in the world. For three weeks, we all but spent every waking minute together. I became convinced that she was _the one_ – the person and cause that could redeem me.

For all her practiced hippie apathy, Rachel turned out to actually be quite pragmatic. A friend of a friend found her a more-than-decent job in Chicago. No choice at all, really. This time, I didn't plead. We parted ways with sad smiles on our lips. Unlike Jennifer, I never heard from her again.

After that particular disappointment, I set to wandering again. A dry spell of embarrassing proportion. A few blind dates, obviously dead from their first moments. One workplace flirtation led to drinks, a poorly chosen turn of phrase, and then the kind of excruciating awkwardness that only failed on-the-job romance can create.

I received a stoned blowjob from Jade Egoyan and was interrupted by an emergency phone call before I could reciprocate.

Before my most recent sexual drought, I had woken up still drunk next to a woman who I eventually remembered was named Laura. Though I knew that we had banged the night before, the specifics of it eluded me. After rising from her pillow with a red-eyed jolt, she looked at me as if she were lying next to a banana slug. She eventually slunk from my apartment with a hung-over air of shame and mild disgust.

That brought me to tonight. Of all nights.

Quite an inventory, Linus. Pathetically endearing. Remove the "endearing" part, actually, and I think we've hit the God's honest truth. Don't you?

Someone was singing. The voice lifted up from some rooftop or stoop I could not see from the inn. It was a woman's voice, sung low and long and with mournful intensity. Try as I might, I couldn't make out the words.

Ah, come off it, I thought. No need for that self-loathing bullshit. Not tonight. You're a hero, you sad sack fuck! _The _Hero! Maybe.

A week ago, I had been just another burnout slob, wallowing in self-pity and paranoid dread, occasionally turning over the idea of killing myself and setting it aside like some weird, repellent bauble I'd found in a drawer. Undeniably adrift, self-deceptively lonely, medicating with a constant flow of cannabis and alcohol. Joyless, sexless, purposeless. A lost boy hiding in the skin of a man.

In the space of thirty-six hours, all that had changed. A grand miracle had occurred. The parched void of my life had been quenched as if it were a wish fulfilled.

Wind whistled through the eaves of the inn. Something metal clattered against stone. A door's hinges whined.

And it struck me then – struck me like a furious hammer blow.

I had wanted this.

In some strange, not-so-secret way, I had wanted all of this.

With the realization came a terror as pure and crystalline as fresh-fallen snow. In that moment, everything seemed to make a horrible, beautiful, kismet sense. My eyes felt frozen. My mouth seemed to go dry and mealy as a pile of wood shavings.

I had wanted this. Yes. I had wanted to escape.

_I had made all this happen._

Shaking my head violently, I muttered, "Bullshit. _Bullshit._" I was tired and damaged and more than a little weirded out by the sudden intercourse I had just engaged in. My exhausted, fogbound brain was doing somersaults of destructive anti-logic. Nothing more.

There came a sly and slithering voice:

Don't run away from this, Linus. This is it. This is your moment of truth. No more hiding from it. Face it. Time to sit down and really, _really _get to know yourself. Motherfucker.

It rose from the depths of my brain. Quite a familiar voice. My voice. The Other Me. Of course.

I swallowed dryly and gazed at dark roofs as if they were windows into a waiting abyss.

It's impossible, I pondered. I thought I settled this.

Oh, did you now? I replied. Or did you just shove it into a corner and stop looking at it? It's not as if it ever really went away. Of course it didn't. The fear. The distrust. That doubt. The gnawing anxiety that _none of this is actually happening_.

I thought, That's silly. That's stupid.

Pwaha! Yeah, of course. You're right. How crass of me. It's totally reasonable that you're standing here right now, on this balcony, in a town that you'd never heard of before this morning. It's perfectly logical that you're walking around a country that's been the setting of your favorite video game series since before you hit puberty. Oh, and I'd say that you can just sit back and enjoy the fact that you just screwed a girl who you first "met" on a television screen when you were a teenager. A fictional. Fucking. Character.

Face it, man: You're experiencing all this because you _want _to experience it. _Need _to, maybe. These are people, places, and things that you have been obsessed with for your entire life. You think that it's a coincidence that you fell asleep playing _The Legend of Zelda_, mired in liquor and despair, and then woke up with a magic sword and a bad case of cosmic destiny? Seriously?

I desire desperately, ergo . . .

There was ringing in my ears. A humming numbness in my taut knuckles.

Ergo . . . ergo what?

My teeth pressed together so hard it began to hurt.

Ergo what? Ergo what do you fucking think? You couldn't hash it in the real world, so you've taken leave of it. You've gone insane and are living within an immense delusion! None of this is real. None of this could possibly _ever_ be real. You've just spent a stupendous amount of time and effort convincing yourself that it is.

You're bored? Feel stuck in a vast rut? Okay – how about a little action? Some _adventure_, perhaps? A bit of heart-pumping, muscle-shredding violence might do sir some good, I do say.

You're lonely? Have some instantaneous friends and followers. Try out a crowd that hangs on your every word and action.

You're starved for sex? Here, have a casual fuck your first night in the neighborhood. You like redheads with freckles, right? No worries, dude – no strings attached. Hell, she even takes birth control. No worries at _all_, dawg!

You feel like you don't have a purpose in life? Well, have I got a fucking deal for you! How about I give you the chance to _save the goddamn world_?

That good enough for you, you crazy, pathetic cunt?

You are not here. You are not doing what you think you're doing. All those fears and anxieties and nagging questions you felt back in that "forest" were right. You're wandering about in some kind of dream state – some kind of hideous prolonged hallucination. An illusion so vast and encompassing that it's devoured the entirety of the world.

I felt on the verge of passing out. My breaths came quick and shallow as a newborn bird's. Each inhalation hitched beneath my ribs painfully.

So _this _was the panic attack. _This _was my nervous breakdown.

Oh God!

Yeah mang, I mused, I'd say it's all lined up deliciously, eh? So convenient, you could serve it take-out. You get it all: The girl, the glory, the sheer joy of becoming your own bona fide hero. Fuck _playing _as Link – now you _are _him! Shit, it feels almost too good to be true.

I tittered. It was a small, frightened, hyperventilated sound.

But, wait, I thought. Wait wait wait. It's not like this has been nothing but tulips and sunshine. This was a dusty, mud-smeared, paint-splattered, roughshod place. It smelled of wood fires, weird ointments, gooey sap, and manure.

It's _hurt_. This supposed vacation from reality had cut, chopped, bashed, and burned. My body had been through more in the last two days than it had in five years.

Even as I mulled on this, my shoulders ached and the stitches in my cheek itched like weevils chewing through my flesh.

Jabbing back, I thought, Hell, what's a little realism where your own mind is concerned? Remember when you were on LSD? You thought that you could smell the blood pumping out of those faucets. You were damned sure that tentacles were actually rolling over your face. All your senses are just wind and sparks, interpreted vaguely by a fallible brain. And if you've retreated completely into the recesses of that particular organ, who's to say whether any of this is just a particularly vivid kind of ur-dream?

Lies. Horseshit. Bullshit! Bullshitbullshit_bullshit_! The brain didn't work that way! No dream has ever felt this real! Even in the most senseless depths of my acid trip, there had been a comforting impression of nonreality.

The railing that pressed against my palms was solid and rough and unyielding. The sky unfolded bright with stars, unmoving and unchanging. Every whiff of grass, soot, and brimstone was crisp and clear. The tastes of Malora's mouth and vanilla cream lingered like welcome phantoms on my tongue. Oloro Town's lamp-lit avenues remained as constant and undeniable as my own flesh.

This was all real. It had to be.

I frowned, feeling the fight draining from me. There was no way to know, was there? No way to know conclusively at all.

It was doublethink, then. A wonderful bit of cognitive dissonance. To see and smell and touch something that must therefore be real; yet, knowing that it could not, by _nature_, be at all real. My mind contained both ideas, and I simultaneously believed both of them.

This final realization – this surrender – brought me no comfort whatsoever. If anything, it poured an even darker, icier deluge of panic down my spine.

If I can't even trust my senses, I reasoned, then what fucking good am I? Whether or not any of this is real (_Which it isn't_, the Other Me crooned) was moot. These people expected me to be their goddamn fighting messiah. They seriously, honest-to-their-goddesses wanted me to end a war against the rough equivalent of the Antichrist.

I was a _data entry clerk_. My bosses didn't even deign to give the title a "technician" on the end to make it sound like skilled labor. I could barely muster the energy to haul my own ass out of bed each morning.

Oh fuck. Oh . . . Christ. And here I was. I didn't even know what was real and what wasn't. I hadn't for days.

I admitted: If you get back on that wagon tomorrow, you're not getting off. You'll ride with those fine, friendly people until this bullshit destiny closes tight and then strangles you. And the whole time, you'll wonder, _Is this really what's happening? Am I really standing here and talking with these folk, or am I babbling to myself in an alleyway? Am I really trying to be Errol fucking Flynn, or am I tied down in a hospital bed?_ Will I ever stop wondering?

I have to go, I suddenly decided. I have to run.

There's got to be another way.

No. _No_, you dumb fucker. Get a goddamn clue. You have to shuck this shit like it's a diseased blanket. You have to run now and never look back. If this is real, then it's pretty fucking obvious that you're not _Link_. That's just stupid. And if this isn't real? You know, the much more sane and prudent option? What kind of damage will you be doing to yourself and others if you run around playing _Legend of Zelda _dress-up?

No: Better to leave all this behind. Find someplace to hide and go to ground. Wait and see whether you wake up in a week under a box, blinking away the California sun. Wait to wake up from this goddamn nightmare.

Malora Lon isn't a nightmare.

Also . . ., the horrified, trembling part of me decided, . . . also, drop the Master Sword. Just leave it in this room. Do what you fucking should have done five days ago. Be rid of it. It's not yours to keep, anyway. When the true Link finds it, he'll be all the happier that you did some of the work for him.

I pivoted like a trooper and tromped back into the bedroom. I didn't bother closing the balcony doors behind me. Starlight and distant lampglow painted the contours of the bed. Fear focused my vision until I hardly saw at all. I watched as through a dark screen as my hands tore the Master Sword from the duffle and dropped it on the still-ruffled covers atop the bed.

It was with buzzing fingers that I shouldered my bag and sneaked into the twilit hallway.


	22. 22

**22**

I was to be a fugitive, then. A rank bastard of both destiny and the law.

One of the final rational holdouts of my mind felt a genuine stab of remorse for this. I thought about Malora – about her quiet, awed adulation – and grimaced at what a shitheel I had suddenly become.

There was no helping it, though. My guilt was crushed beneath layers of purposeful hysteria. The terror pounded and pounded and pounded in me. I shuffled down the hall and onto the creaking stairs as if I were attempting a prison escape.

Though candles still glowed in the foyer and great room of the inn, these chambers were empty. The front desk sat unmanned. The elderly innkeeper was nowhere to be seen.

I started for the front doors and then hesitated. I bobbled my heels on the worn, green-patterned carpet. What if militia guards were still posted on the inn's steps? I couldn't just stroll out there, bag strapped over my shoulder, and say, "Nice night, huh?" No way would they let me take off for a midnight constitutional. I was, after all, the guy they were supposedly standing watch for. With no windows in either of the double doors, I couldn't be sure whether the sentries remained or not.

Plan B, then. I slipped into the little kitchen off the inn's main room. In its corner, a thin man in cook's whites slumped in a chair. He grinned contentedly in his sleep, drooling on his collar. In one hand was still gripped a green bottle. A small amount of wine sloshed back and forth in time to the cook's breathing.

As I had suspected, a squat door sat in a slightly sunken alcove. A blocky, grease-shining slab of wood on iron hinges. Eyes on the sleeping chef, I tried the door's ring. Heavy and solid, but unlocked.

Now: What if there were guards on _this _entrance, as well?

For all the rollercoaster emotions that had driven me to this point, I was still thinking fairly methodically. I decided that a bit of scouting was in order. With one hand I settled the duffle bag onto the kitchen's stone tiles; with the other, I gently pressed open the side door. The low whine of its hinges made me wince. To my relief, the drunk in the corner continued to whistle through his nostrils.

Murky lamplight burst from the kitchen and settled into a narrow alleyway beyond. The wall of a squat adobe structure sat across from the door. It was very dark here. Beyond the pool of yellow spread by the doorway, only thin slivers of moonlight fell. All else marinated in drifting patches of gloom.

There was a curious stuffiness about the place. Above me ran a blue-black river of stars, pressed into a canal by the parallel rooftops. It seemed warmer and balmier in the alley than it had up on the balcony. The air swirled with odors of blood, cooking fat, and rotting vegetable matter. I caught a puff of smoke-scent that was sweet, thick, and familiar.

I looked right. The alleyway ran straight and terminated in what looked like a rough plank gate. If I had my bearings, that would be the way onto the street in front of the inn. Direct and known, but also risky – I could walk through the gate and straight into Oloro's guard patrols.

I looked left. A farther stretch, which eventually ended in a rubbish-piled fence. It looked easy enough to scale . . . though I had no idea what lay over the other side. Not that it mattered – in the coming hours, I would have to steel myself against that particular uncertainty. I nodded and started to duck back into the kitchen for my bag.

"Oy."

No one ever would ever know how close I came to pissing myself right then and there. The man who said the word must have had an inkling, because I shuddered, did a half-jump-half-jig backwards, and made a noise like a cat hit with a lead pipe.

Ingo laughed like he had broken glass in his throat. Only now – after he emerged from the shadows coating the Silver Shell Inn's wall – could I see his lean and ghastly silhouette. Thin coils of smoke curled off a pipe he held in one hand. He beckoned with it and growled, "Ah. You, lad. Hero o' the hour. Come out for a wee bit o' the night air?"

To this day, I'm still not sure how I recomposed myself so quickly. By all accounts, I should have rushed back into the inn with a mewl on my lips and liquid feces dripping off the cuffs of my pants. Instead, I quietly closed the door behind me and then leaned into the wall beside it. I hoped that Ingo didn't see my knees and hands as they shook.

It took me a good few moments to formulate a response. "Yeah, man," I finally said. "Can't sleep. Figured I'd walk the grounds a bit." I decided to take a direct gamble, if only to see exactly where it was that I stood. I said, "I didn't want to bother those guards out front, either."

Ingo's head bobbed. "Aye," he said. "Fine fellows I'm sure, those militia lads, but Ingo don't want to deal with some volunteer provincial yahoos with polearms. He's an old soldier through an' through, Ingo is, but he don't take to no amateurs."

Before I could determine just how insulted I should be by this, Ingo took a step closer to me and grumbled, "Err. Apologies, lad. Ingo's a bit in his cups, Din please ya'. Some mean whiskey they serve around these parts. He gets to ramblin' a bit when the booze is in his blood."

The ranch hand turned, leaned back, and plopped his shoulders against the brick wall as if settling into an overstuffed couch. He sucked audibly on his pipe and its bowl glowed ruby red. Sweet, thick vapors flowed forth. "He also likes his branna, when he's got a few in him," Ingo chuckled.

I just stared at him – this gangly, bastard bag of bones – as he reclined against the inn. My entire body coiled with tense anticipation of what came next: A warning, an alarum, a thinly veiled threat. My heart still blasted in my chest; terror-thoughts and ragged doubts still drove me to escape. I wanted to turn and run – fuck the bag – before this spiteful asshole tried anything funny.

For his part, Ingo didn't look at me, instead fixing his gaze on the wall across the alley. Rather, throughthe wall – to some point unfathomable to me at that moment. Ingo puffed on the pipe stem with thin lips. His mustache bristled and he coughed as if in consideration.

"Ingo's got to apologize to you, Linus."

I blinked in the quarter-light. "What?" I said.

He nodded somberly. "Much so. Aye. Very much." Ingo took a rattling breath. "Turns out you ain't half-bad, kid."

At this, I could do little but stare vacantly at the man and try to keep my astonishment in check. He didn't seem to care about my silence, instead launching forward with what passed for an apology.

"Ingo treated ya' badly when ya' first arrived on his doorstep, so to speak. For all the help you gave him in that brawl wi' the snouts, he still didn't trust ya'. Mind ya', you weren't exactly actin' trustworthy." He poked the pipe in my direction. "Foreign and weird, ya' were. Just appeared like that, just then? No, Ingo weren't comfortable with that at all. But!" He inhaled lightly. Smoke slithered from his nostrils.

"Yeah?"

"But – Ingo shouldn't have been so harsh on ya'. It's obvious now that you just wanted to help. Weren't nothin' sinister to you, but . . ." He let off a gravelly rumble. "Ingo's right protective o' the Lons."

"I noticed."

"Experience, lad. Ingo's in charge o' hirin' the ranch's seasonal hands. Two summers back, he brought on a bright, strong fellow – name o' Beltram Turner. Ingo thought this lad were goin' to work out just fine n' dandy, he did. He shoulda been more careful. Ingo knew the world, but let himself believe that it were a better place than it is. Never again."

Ingo shook his head. For the first time, I saw an emotion leak into Ingo's eyes that wasn't anger or sadistic amusement: Regret.

Dude's shitfaced, I thought. I can probably just . . .

Ingo perked up, a sloshy brightening in his features. With eyebrows raised, he extended the pipe. "Smoke, lad? Takes a good while to go through a full wad o' this."

"Branna?" I asked. He nodded and twisty smirk crossed his lips. "What's it like?"

"Don't have branna where ya' come from?"

"I don't think so."

He said, "Well, give 'er a try. A bit sticky, aye, but it's a fine way to burn away a day's troubles."

You need to _go_, man, I thought. Find a way around him. Shouldn't be hard – he's really drunk and who knows what else. Push past him and run for the fences. Slip out into the world to hide and wait and see where all this ends and you begin.

I eyed the proffered pipe. Ingo stood patiently, still as a statue despite his apparent intoxication.

Shit. So much easier said than done.

Instead of making a break for it, I palmed the pipe and lifted the stem to my lips.

Quick puffs – practiced cannabis breathing – memories of countless pieces of glassware, frayed couches, cheap Chinese takeout, and old science fiction movies. The smoke that pulled into my body was strange, heavy, cool-burning stuff. Its flavor was gooey and saccharine, like overripe fruit or sugar cane. Even after I exhaled, the taste lingered along the back of my tongue and throat.

Within a couple of minutes, a mellow, amiable buzz – somewhere between water pipe tobacco and weak marijuana – settled over my neck and shoulders. Not at all unpleasant. Much of the physical tension drained from my muscles and seemed to dissipate on the still night air.

"Not bad," I said.

Ingo gave a curt nod as he took the branna back and inspected the still-smoldering bowl. "See? Fine midnight smoke, it is. No jitter-dance like tobacco. Good for passin' about a campfire, before rollin' in until dawn. Got turned onto it back in the Fifth Legion, I did."

The stars swam through a blink-heavy, tired haze. I thought again about the revelation I had been running from, and now the scissor-stab of panic seemed much less acute. Certainly not so imperative. I decided to wait until after Ingo turned in to finally make my escape.

"So . . . what happened?" I asked.

"Errr – what?"

"With Beltram," I said. "What did he do to make you so hostile to strangers?"

"Ingo were always hostile to strangers, lad. Part an' parcel o' bein' Ingo, he guesses. It may not make him many friends, but at least he don't get robbed or take a sticker between the ribs. With Beltram though – well, Ingo made the mistake o' trustin' him. Believin' his pretty lies. So, when the bastard tried to rape Cremia Lon, Ingo were more shocked than anyone."

A fetid, uncomfortable silence.

Ingo continued, "Turned out that the lad were runnin' from the law for doin' the same thing out in Seamarch. After me an' the other hands had some time alone with him, we shipped 'em out to a magistrate in that province. They hanged him a week later. Good buggerin' riddance.

"But . . . _but_." He stabbed the pipe stem out as if it were an ice pick. "Ingo let his guard down an' young Cremlon, she almost paid the price. She were strong enough to crush his bollocks and escape, but _what if_? Ingo'd have that on him for the rest o' his life, an' certainly the rest o' hers. And that's Ingo's point, if he ever had one. After he were so awfully wrong about Beltram, he weren't goin' to take no chances with you. Or anyone."

"Jesus," I breathed. "That's hardcore."

"Aye." Pipeglow played up Ingo's fingers. "So, Ingo's sorry he were a bastard to ya'. Not like he'd know you're the Hero o' bloody legend. How could he?"

"Ha!" I chuffed. "Ain't that the truth?"

"Buggerin' right!" Ingo laughed. "Right weird feller like you just bumbles out o' nowhere? Ye gods, it's a wonder I let you travel with us as far as ya' did. Ingo's a mean, suspicious gohma more often than not."

"Wait. Is that some self-deprecation I detect?" I asked sleepily.

"Mayhap." He shrugged. "In all seriousness, you done well tonight and Ingo's got to say so. Ingo owes everything he has to the Lons. When you did right by them, you did right by him."

"Thanks."

"Don't let it go to yer head, now."

"Trust me," I sighed, "it won't."

I took the pipe with practiced, borderline-subconscious hands. Another couple of lungfuls set the branna buzz in for a lengthier duration. It was a joy to feel my intransigent mind slow and start to calm.

Beyond the alley, a hound bayed excitedly. Someone spoke low, appreciative words and the dog settled into strained whines of greeting. A dim white meteor formed a momentary scratch against the sky.

Feeling the silence starting to turn ungainly, I coughed, "How'd you hook up with them, anyway? The Lons, I mean. Are they family?"

"They are. All but the only family Ingo's ever had. Not by blood, but certainly by bond."

He scratched at his lumpy nose and said, "Ingo grew up in and around Bower Town, which is south o' where we first picked ya' up, if you must know. Not much o' a town, but all sorts o' farms an' ranches about it. Were miles o' country for a boy to get into a trouble in.

"Ingo's ma died birthin' him, as women were prone to do in those days. His pa were a little too fond o' cheap whiskey an' dice, but he weren't no monster neither. Kept a roof over Ingo's head, he did. So Ingo didn't have it bad comin' up in the world. Were Tash's mother, Elia, who did most o' Ingo's raisin'.

"The Lon family owned all the land borderin' pa's homestead. He weren't ever able to keep up with the credit-men, so Tash's pa, Dav, bought the plot an' put my father on his payroll as a hand. Dav let pa keep that land to hisself an' me, but pa, he don't forget a debt like that. Though he never lost his taste for hooch an' a game, pa worked loyal for Dav Lon until the day ol' Dav died."

There were footsteps in the direction of the alley gate. A pair of low voices snickering and conspiring.

Ingo sniffed. "Ingo'd known lil' Tash for years before that point. He won't say that they were fast friends, but they were hellraisers and frog-catchers together. After Ingo's family were absorbed into the Lon household, they was nigh inseparable. Grew up together on the Eldin Plains, they did – learnin' to ride n' fish n' tend the beeves. Tash's been Ingo's fiercest friend near all his life, lad."

I nodded appreciatively. You need to run, a small voice in me whispered. My vaporous buzz batted it away.

"Ingo learned his letters on account o' Elia, an' his figures on account o' Dav. He watched the Lon ranch grow an' grow each year, until it were one o' the richest places in all o' mid-Hyrule.

"Problem was," he said, "that Ingo saw how much he were getting' indebted to the Lons an', well . . ." He took a deep breath. "Ingo won't lie. He thought he were smarter than the average hand in those days. He thought he had a destiny, see. And he knew that he'd have a long, fine, guaranteed life on the Lon ranch. So long as there were beeves to herd and broncs to break, Ingo'd have steady work. There'd always be a place for him."

Ingo gestured to the sky with his pipe. "But that were the thing, see? Ingo didn't want a good, safe sort o' life. The world were changin' then. A young king sat the throne an' they said that he were friendly to the idea o' a different sort o' kingdom. Alchemists n' sorcerers o' the guilds had come out o' hidin' and were startin' great works. Common men just like Ingo were makin' their fortunes. It were a new Hyrule. Ingo wanted to grab his slice o' the pie.

"So, one night in the autumn o' Ingo's seventeenth year, he slipped out o' his pa's cabin and started walkin' north. The only person he told he was leavin' were Tash. Ingo hitched a ride at the Lord's Highway. Traveled all the way to Hylium, where he signed up at the Royal Legionary Headquarters on the Ulo. Like that, he were a military man.

"Spent eight years in the royal service, Ingo did. First as a pike legionary, then as a sergeant-at-arms for the Fifteenth Foot o' the Fifth Legion. Spent his first year in Hylium, then transferred up to Faron Province. After that, Ingo served in Kakariko and the mountain territories. When the snouts rebelled in the year o' 91, the Fifth Legion were one o' the first sent into the canyons to root 'em out."

Somewhere, a bell rang, perhaps chiming the hour. If that was the case, it was going on one in the morning. Impossible.

"It turned out that most o' the rebels were just bandits from the high peaks. The rest were a bunch o' farmers scared shitless o' not followin' the vicious bastards. Snout amateurs are even worse than regular amateurs, Ingo tells ya'. Still, they knew the mountains an' all the little hidey holes up in 'em. Even if they couldn't hope to beat us in a straight fight, they could still be handy wi' a bow.

"So, one fine afternoon Ingo an' his boys were inspectin' one o' the lakes around Tall Hat when they came under ambush. Rocks an' arrows all around. Ingo managed to get the lads to cover, but not before a nice jagged arrowhead passed from one side o' his leg to the other, endin' his career as an infantryman.

"Ingo almost lost the leg – not to mention his life – when a fever followed the wound. He laid out the rest o' the war. King Harkinian hisself led the First Legion up into the mountains, smashed the mob chiefs like ants, an' made the survivors sign treaties promisin' to never again raise arms against the King o' Hyrule."

Ingo gave me a withering look. "Fat lot o' good that did, eh?"

I shrugged.

"So there's ol' Ingo, trucked back to Hylium like a sack o' rice. Leg's busted all to hell; brain's all foggy from the kinds o' potions they tested on the legionaries back in those days. He knows that he'll never soldier again. Knows that his days o' glory are done." Breath whistled through his nostrils. Smoke slipped from his lips. "One day Ingo woke in the legionary hospital to a message tellin' him that his pa were dead. Now, Ingo'd never been what you'd call close with his father. But – Nayru preserve – your pa's your pa. Driftin' toward melancholy as he was, Ingo felt some last part o' him just crack apart an' give up."

"Fucking hell, man," I murmured. "I know that. I know that bad."

"Your father, then . . .?"

"Yeah."

He nodded with that distant, scraping knowledge. "Then you know how _empty_ it feels. Ingo found out in his time.

"When the Legion gave him a discharge purse o' a few Rupees an' a clasp on the arm, Ingo just wandered out into the streets o' Midtown an' set to driftin'. Found the first pub he saw an' drank down his last pay. Then he walked out into the night o' Hylium with no kind o' destination in mind. He thought about tryin' for Eldin – tryin' to return to the Lons. But it'd been too long. Even Tash'd stopped writin' letters some five years before. He decided to stay in the city an' see what came of it.

"That were a dark time for Ingo, it was. He worked any odd job that came his way: packer, teamster, porter, knuckleman. None lasted long. He started drinkin' too much an' sniffin' djaff. Did some worse things in his time, too. Spent more than a few nights in a district lock-up. Were little better than a common cutpurse for some months."

Ingo inhaled deep and found that his pipe had gone cold. He produced a small wooden box from his overalls pocket, pulled a splintery match from it, and set to the task of re-ignition. As he pursed his lips and made beached fish sounds, Ingo said, "So after all that time livin' hand-to-mouth in the alleys an' basements an' flophouses o' Hylium, Ingo ended up in the service o' some dour fellows from the West Side Marshymen. He worked as a stevedore at the Sturm River locks, lookin' the other way when their barges full o' djaff, molasses, an' cut-rate branna came through customs. Were the inspectors who pocketed the most o' the Rupees in bribes, o' course, but the Marshies kept Ingo well in hand with table scraps. Not to mention just enough o' that sweet red powder. They were all right bastards – not even proper thieves, really – an' they let Ingo know that he were just a bottom-feedin' guttershite that they could replace right quick if ever he thought about steppin' out o' line."

For a moment, Ingo let his gaze fall. Most of his face vanished in starborne shadow. One eye shone with contemplative shame.

"Came a day when they said that some young nob were comin' to offload a ship full o' valehorn cattle. Big Jon Tempress – the Marshymen's chief knuckleman back in them days – says to Ingo that he wants a third o' those beeves off the barge the night before the buyer shows up. Chalk it up to pox; let the yardmaster forge a new manifest. 'Oh aye,' says Ingo, 'cause this is his bread and butter now. It's not a scratch on his conscience because it means more djaff and more Rupees for booze n' whores about the West Side.

"There were quite a problem, though: That nob buyer showed up before the barge were even in sight o' Hyrule proper. This big white coach came ramblin' up to the gates o' the lockyard, just as keen as you please, an' Ingo knew instantly that it were rented. Somebody's idea o' a joke, Ingo thinks. But then word reaches him that it's the cattleman, an' Ingo knows that he'll have to think fast if he wants to earn Big Jon's money."

Ingo's gold tooth shone like a gaudy star. "But who would come fallin' out o' that coach like a godsdamned jester? Why, he were ten years older n' fatter than when Ingo last saw him, but the man comin' off the step were none other than Tashiel Lon. He were dressed up like some hoity-toity Hylium society man – all tailored suit n' tails, top hat, and even a blue n' white sash over his shoulder. Bloody ridiculous!

"Then Ingo realizes just how much trouble he's in. He tries to hide. Tries not to be recognized by his old friend from Eldin. O' course it didn't work. Much as he's a scatter-brained fellow, Tash ain't no idiot and he ain't unobservant. His eyes go wide and he gets this queer sort o' quiver in his lips. 'Ingo!' cries he. 'Ingo, old friend!' And Din preserve us both, but he comes runnin' across the yard wi' tears in his eyes. Most emabarrassin' thing Ingo ever saw in his life."

We both chuckled.

"So after Tash blubbered a while into Ingo's shoulder, the man tells the yardmaster that he needs to take his old friend out for a drink and would he kindly let him off for the afternoon? Now Ingo is sure that the yardmaster, who's a hemorrhoid-dancin' shitbeard on the best o' days, is goin' to blow up at this. Imagine Ingo's surprise when this fellow's all bows and smiles. 'Oh, _certainly_, Lord Lon,' the yardie says. 'Anythin' for a fine customer such as yourself.'"

Ingo's grin was wide and unnerving. "Tash took Ingo to the best inn in the West Side, babblin' all the while about how he were married now an' how sorry he was that Ingo's pa were in the grave. All the while, Ingo's thinkin', 'Now, he said _Lord _Lon, right?' So, as Tash were orderin' oysters an' the best whiskey in Hylium, Ingo asked, 'Oy, Tash. When that tosser called you "Lord," he meant "Count," right?'

"'Nay,' says Tash." Ingo did a passable, if not incredibly unflattering, imitation of Tash's nervous and hesitant speech pattern. "'While you were gone, Ingo, a lot's changed on our little ranch. Turns out I'm a bloody lordling!'

"'What, did you save King Daffy's royal red arse from a rampagin' octorock or some such thing?' says Ingo.

"Tash just shook his head and said, 'No, you daft fellow. Found out that I was _born _a Lord. Me an' all the Lon men before me.'"

Ingo let that hang in the air, as if it were self-evident.

"So . . ." I said tentatively, ". . . you're telling me that Tash and Malora are nobility?" I was surprised at my lack of surprise.

"Ingo thought you'd have figured it out yourself by now, actually."

"I . . . well. Kind of. I knew something was up, but I still don't get the whole class structure here. The difference between Counts and Lords and all that crap."

A somber nod. "Ingo can see how that might be confusin'. Were a time where he weren't sure o' the status o' a Count, either." He smacked his lips and said, "Easy way to remember it is: title o' Count ain't passed down father to son. It's conveyed to prominent common citizens or can be purchased for a hefty ransom, which usually means they're prominent anyway.

"A Lordship guarantees a seat on the Council o' Lords, what advise an' interpret the will o' the King. The title's hereditary an' can only be granted – or taken away – by the King o' Hyrule himself. There ain't been a new Lordship granted in, ah, half a millennium, Ingo thinks."

"So what about Tash?" I said. "How'd he suddenly become a Lord?"

Ingo chuffed, "Weren't nothing sudden about it, lad. He an' the Lon clan didn't even know, Din save 'em. They were what the old legends call a 'Lost House' – a noble family that, due to time an' circumstances, forgets that it's noble. In Tash's case, his family _weren't _noble, technically, when he were born."

"You lost me," I said.

Ingo sighed, grimaced, and gesticulated with the pipe as if highlighting an invisible flowchart. "Turns out the family Lon were once House Londas – a minor clan, but one o' the oldest in Hyrule, so they say.

"When House Midnas rose up and challenged the reigning Fifth Harkinian Dynasty a few centuries back, Lord Londas sided with the Harkinian kings. So, after the Midnas bastards took the throne, they executed Londas for treason and took the family's lands n' titles. His sons ended up goin' so far into hidin' that their grandchildren didn't even know that they'd once been nobs. By the time Mister Tashiel were born, the family thought it were just an old ranchin' clan o' the Eldin plains."

Quite a bit of this made no sense to me, but I nodded along to the parts that I did understand.

"O' course, House Harkinian were back in power almost a century at that point, but everyone thought all the Londas folk were dead and gone," Ingo continued. "Round the time Ingo were leadin' soldiers up in the Death Mountains, Tash started sellin' milk an' meat in Hylium. Got to be a small craze for the stuff, so he made the Rupees hand over fist. Got to be a bit famous, too. Some enterprising sage o' the Royal Archives got wind o' the Lon Ranch n' Dairy, and Farore knows how he put 'Lon' n' 'Londas' together.

"Next thing Tash knows, some royal clerk bastards are on his doorstep, wantin' to verify heraldry an' examine his family's heirlooms an' all that mess. Poor Tash had been worried that they'd come to arrest him for the still he had built in a back shed.

"After some weeks o' that oxshite, bloody King Daphnes Harkinian himself invited Tash for an audience at the royal palace in Hylium. By that time, Tash n' the clan had an idea o' what was really goin' on. Didn't stop him from being scared as a wee boy, but he manned up an' took to that palace right quick.

"Ingo's sure ya' already know where this is goin'. After all kinds o' ceremonial hoopla, King Harkinian recognized Tash as the rightful heir o' House Londas an' bestowed upon him all the titles an' privileges that involves. Couldn't give 'em any lands, what with all the restrictions put on that there sort o' thing by the Midnas Dynasty, but it didn't really matter at that point. Tash an' all the Lon family were officially nobs, now and forever."

I shook my head and sputtered, "Wait. But – fuckin' hell – why didn't Tash change the family name back to Londas? And why did he make such a big deal about _not _using the noble floor of the bathhouse today?"

Between sucks and puffs at the clearly diminishing bowl of smoking branna, Ingo said, "Tash specifically requested that his House be 'House Lon' durin' the ceremonies conferrin' his title. As for the second thing: After gettin' a taste o' the nob life in Hylium, Tash figured out that he liked the ol' province livin' better. He couldn't wrap himself around all those fancy airs n' jangly mannerisms. Preferred the life o' a well-off merchantman than that o' some spoiled Lord's son who never worked a day in his life. Ever since the war brought all them gold-plated Farons n' Shimshars n' Baeleuses down from the north, Tash's gotten outright embarrassed at bein' a nob. He thinks it's poor company."

"Is it?"

Ingo made the same fingers-to-the-temple gesture I had seen on the road. _Shit if I know, man_.

"As for the bathhouse, well . . . Ingo thinks Tash just wanted to impress ya' without makin' it seem like he were leanin' on the crutch o' his birth. If it matters, he _always _takes the third floor. Ain't never been up to the fourth, no matter how much Ingo or his family beg him."

"Ah-haaa." I waited for Ingo to take up his previous narrative thread, but instead he stared with drunken, dozed dolor at the wall. "So," I prodded, "after you reunited with Tash, what happened?"

"Errr, what? Oh. Aye. Were tellin' that, Ingo was." He narrowed his eyes as if the act of collecting his thoughts was as taxing a thing as he could manage at that moment. "Aye then: Ingo ended up spillin' everything that'd happened to him in the years since the snout war's end. Were a pathetic display, Ingo assures ya'. Even told Tash about the Marshymen's plan to scarper with those cattle. Tash, Nayru bless him, took it all in kind. He told Ingo that, if he wanted, Ingo could come back to the Lon Ranch an' work there as a hand for a while. Just to get back on his feet."

An invisible insect clicked and clacked near the garbage heap at the end of the alley.

"That meant buyin' Ingo out o' the Marshymen's pockets, which ended up bein' dear to poor Tash. He ended up losin' half o' those valehorns instead o' the mere third the bastards first intended on. Means the world to Ingo that Tash would pay that trumped-up price for some junkie areshole. Like that, Ingo were headin' south from Hylium and back to where he were born n' raised. Back to his true family, which were larger n' stranger now . . . but family all the same.

"Tash had ended up marryin' Farah Jalont, the daughter o' Bower Town's mayor. A girl that Ingo has to admit he had his eye on, back when he was a growin' lad. When Tash scraped Ingo off the Hylium streets, Farah were expectin' their first. Malon were born just a couple months after Ingo arrived back in Eldin. Poor little Kalon came two years later, Nayru bless him always.

"That were twenty years ago, give or take. He's lived on the Lon Ranch n' Dairy Farm ever since. First as a hand, then supervisor, then crew boss. It's been a good life, all told. Ingo knows where his meals are comin' from and, more often than not, he knows where he's goin'. Still, he wonders from time to time, he does. If that destiny he imagined is still out there, waitin' for him. After the Bloody Declaration, Ingo even thought about tryin' to sign on with the Legions again – perhaps as a trainer or quartermaster."

He sighed so heavily that the sound was almost industrial. "Ingo ain't no fool, though. They'd not take a man wi' a bum leg an' the ghost o' so much djaff in his skull. An' really? It all comes down to where Ingo's his happiest. As grand as his days in the King's service were, he knows that the Lon Ranch has always been and always will be his home."

The quiet that settled between us was evanescent. We glowed with starlight.

"That is quite a fucking story," I eventually said.

"Ain't it?" Ingo took one last suck on the stem of his pipe and found the bowl finally, irrevocably dead. "Ingo don't know what his point were, alas."

"There need to be?"

"Reckon not."

Truth be told, I wasn't actually paying attention to Ingo's failed, inebriated attempt to grant his story a moral. As Ingo had ambled like a lazing snake through the contours of his tale, something had grown in me. I wouldn't call it "courage," exactly, because at the back of my mind I was still utterly scared shitless. Rather, what rose in me then might best be labeled "resolve." A fortification; a steeling; a swallowing of pride and clenching back on fear. A gunmetal blossom nurtured in the airy loam of this interlude.

Though I didn't come to the conclusion in a snap moment, I did realize that this would be the end of my long, long day.

I couldn't leave. I couldn't possibly leave. Not now. Not after all that had happened. And I knew how the next moments of my life would go:

After this conversation ended, I would return to my bedroom in the Silver Shell. I would slide my magic sword back into its duffle bag. I would crawl under the covers and fall asleep. In the morning, I would rise and depart with the Lons. I would travel to Hylium. There, I would search for answers if any existed.

I stretched and took one last huff of coagulated alley air. To my surprise, a yawn croaked past my lips. "Well man," I murmured. "Thanks for the smoke. That's some pretty good shit. I think I'm finally ready to hit the hay."

Ingo nodded. He raised his pipe bowl to one eyeball and inspected its gray contents. "Ingo thinks it's probably time he tried for sleep himself. It was a good talk we had, he thinks."

"Yeah."

His eyebrows arched in some weird approximation of worry. "Maybe it's really the whiskey talkin', but Ingo's right glad you're with us. Him an' the Lons. He looks forward to travelin' with ya', and seein' you on to your destiny. He knows you'll do for Hyrule exactly what you done for him an' his."

We clasped arms then – not exactly in friendship, but something close enough. A camaraderie born of trial, obligation, and the familiar ritual of the shared smoke. With that, I reached for the Silver Shell's side door.

"Oh, and Linus?"

I turned. Ingo stood in profile, only half of his face lit by the moon and stars. The eye that had just moments ago been so introspective was now as dead as a sunless planet.

"Fair Malon – she's like a niece to Ingo. If you do anything to hurt 'er? Hero or no, Ingo's gonna split you open, scoop out yer guts, and show 'em to you."

And then he smiled.


	23. 23

**23**

There were a great many things I didn't know as I finally went to sleep that night.

Nestled in the Silver Shell Inn's fine bed, I was as ignorant as a babe of the great movements and preparations that swept across the world. So stunned and exhausted was I that I didn't stop to truly consider the depth of the maddened sea into which I was about to jump.

For all of two days worth of revelation and cultural immersion, I actually knew very little about the specifics of Hyrule and its peoples. I knew only the basest outline of the kingdom's geography, climate, customs, and politics. As repeatedly as my assumptions had been shattered the past days, I still clung to the naïve hope that my experience with _The Legend of Zelda_ might provide invaluable touchstones. Perhaps that knowledge could border on prophecy.

I didn't know just how wrong that would end up being.

I didn't know that it was Fellday – the second day in the ten-day week of the Hylian calendar. Nor did I know that it was 12th Lanaius (eighth month of that same calendar), Year 114 of the Sixth Harkinian Dynasty.

It was the forty-first year of the reign of King Daphnes Harkinian. An unusually long rule, even by the ironclad standards of that fabled noble house. Neither of these facts was known to me.

I had no idea that, mere minutes after I hefted the Master Sword outside the Oloro Bathhouse, message runners exploded from each of the town's gates on horseback. These dozens of men (and a handful of women) pushed their mounts until foaming. They galloped half-crazed in all directions, bearing exuberant stories that changed with each telling.

It was not known to me that, by morning, most of the three provinces surrounding Oloro Town knew that the Hero of the Triforce had come at last.

I certainly didn't know that Stefan, Commander Len Groban's military clerk, had transcribed the reams of notes he had taken on me and the night of celebration, condensing them into an official report for the Hylian military. When he finally finished and sent the thick letter to the garrison's messenger hawk aerie for delivery, I had probably been asleep for two hours.

I had no idea that the report would be meticulously copied in garrisons across the breadth of Eldin, Chovo, and Lanayru provinces. No clue that its terse, unflattering words would be tied to the strong backs of trained raptors and sent out to the manors, beer halls, stockades, keeps, barracks, forts, and castles throughout the entirety of the realm. No hint at all that it would, within twelve hours, make its way even over the hills and into the heart of my own destination: the great and glorious city of Hylium, capital of the kingdom and soul of Hyrule.

There was no knowing that Stefan's quick-jotted notes would soon be delivered, kneeling, into the great halls of the Imperial Palace of Hyrule itself.

The hands that would open that report were unknown to me. They came gilded in rings. Their skin was soft and white beneath the glow of colored lamps. I did not know the stab of adrenal panic that would constrict their fingers.

Some were unlike those others – hands dyed dark by the sun, fingers armored with calluses, unadorned but for the scars crisscrossing their tanned flesh. Arms grown steel-banded from years of the sword and the spear. Legs drawn ever taut from either the march or the saddle. For these recipients, the words spread forth by Stefan's report would be received coolly, skeptically, even doubtfully. Eyebrows rose and, in time, orders would be disseminated.

As lips passed the cryptic Hylian writing into the unruly ghost of speech, rumors and hearsay spread like a virus. In the halls of power, even the most pragmatic would be drawn into the ever-accelerating storm of tales that whipped up with my arrival. Men and women made plans based on those whispers. Designs were set in motion – great living machines with me as their sole purpose and mechanism.

Not that I knew any of that.

There was no way of knowing that Karrik Fir-Bulbin had reconnected with the broken remnants of his brother's raiders. At the time, I was blissfully unaware of the moblin warrior's manic flight north. Karrik would deploy his own message-bearing hawks. He also had masters to whom he would send reports. As he and his ragtag pirates raced over the plains, his words traveled before him – beyond the provinces, past the entrenched lines of troops and terrors, and into the unknown heart of Ganon's conquered lands.

Oh, what hands would open the raiders' missive. Oh, what teeth would part in a facsimile of a smile.

While I understood the basic outlines of the war between the Kingdom of Hyrule and Ganon's Protectorate, its origins, timeline, movements, battle lines, tactics, and overall purpose were mysteries to me. I knew not its commanding generals, major battles, puppeting lords, or crafty networks of spies. Its outlines were like a rider cresting a hill with the sunset at his back – soon to arrive, but shrouded in darkness.

I still didn't know for certain whether this world was real or some fearful illusion.

After all these years, I can only lean back, set aside my pen, and shake my head in a moment of grinning astonishment. When I initially set about writing this memoir, I don't think that I intended to delve this deeply into the underbelly of these events. This was, after all, only supposed to be a sober accounting of my journey through Hyrule and all its attendant implications. At what point this became another of my novels . . . well, I wish I could say I _didn't_ know.

But, it's obvious now: Once I began writing of Hyrule itself – of the Eldin Plains, the Lons, and the moblin war . . . it all came flooding back. Stunningly, forcefully, plainly, purposefully. A state of total recall, channeled through my flesh and into the ink flowing from my pen. A joyous tactile trance.

Hell, I barely even realized that I had written a full accounting of my embarrassing sexual liaison with Malora Lon until it stood wet and shining on the page before me. It's not the first time that I have been astonished to find myself including things best left unwritten. Perhaps I will be more careful from now on.

_[Probably not.]_

The point of all this – of this interlude – is that it is all too easy to look back on myself at that point, tilting over the precipice of that new and insensate world, and be amused by my own terrible ignorance. I laugh now at my own youthful, exuberant stupidity. All the same, it's very clear to me now that my own naiveté was a razor's edge away from killing me.

I had no idea of the vastness and terror of the thing that I was about to undertake. I had no idea of the kind of people I was about to meet. I had no idea of the scope of the duty with which I was about to be tasked.

I knew none of it. But I soon would.


	24. 24

**24**

The next two days passed like a fever dream.

We left Oloro Town amid a hangover-laden dawn. A startling sunrise grew at our shoulders. Tash smacked his lips and groaned and goggled at the road with eyes webbed scarlet. He and Ingo passed water skins and canteens the rest of the day, all while wearing expressions of remorseful self-loathing.

Apparently laid low by the previous night's seizure of celebration, few of the town's citizen's saw us off. A few gangs of kids and sober-faced adults waved to us as we rolled through Oloro's north gate. On the blocky ramparts, Elder Thum dipped his head at our passing and made the triangular sign of his religion. Militiamen cheered for luck and the providence of the goddesses. Fists rose in quiet legionary salute.

Thus we moved out of Oloro Town, drove back onto the Lord's Highway, and began to make our way north. The town of hot springs passed into morning shadow and memory.

We had made two stops before our departure. The first was to the same temple where Malora had taken darshan the night before. Though I made a feeble attempt to wave off their entreaties, the Lons succeeded in pulling me inside. It was a somber, ill-lit, spartan place of rough stone arches. This early in the morning, the place was empty save a wizened little goron woman who tended the sanctuary. At the fore of the main room, flanked by a bodyguard of flickering, wax-oozing candles, was the main altar. Atop a mica-glittering pillar was an age-eaten, carved relief of the Triforce. When I knelt and took darshan at Malora's side, it was with a sense of religious dread that I had not felt for almost two decades.

If I'm _not _the Hero, I thought as I glanced up at the graven triangles, I really hope this doesn't piss you gals off.

Next came a visit to the garrison office of Commander Len Groban. Amidst a room so new it still smelled of sap and wood chips, I watched the taciturn soldier push an open ledger toward me. His quartermaster (a glum, fat, gray-haired man who had clearly woken up drunk) explained that the page was an affidavit attesting that I had, in fact, killed Elkan Fir-Bulbin. Trusting naively that no one would try to scam the Hero of the Triforce, I grabbed an ink-dripping quill as soon as it appeared before me. Still feigning illiteracy, I signed the proffered line with an "X."

With that out of the way, the quartermaster grudgingly handed me a satchel fat with Rupees. Twenty red pieces and ten cerulean. Five and twenty Rupee denominations, respectively.

And so we returned to the road. Dust at our backs and miles of open prairie country before us. Rising from Oloro's fertile caldera valley, we found ourselves once more in the cusp of an unadorned country of hills and endless crops. At some point soon after – in a crossing marked only by a garishly-painted road sign and a pillbox-like watchtower – we entered Chovo Province.

With Tash and Ingo so hung over that it took all their efforts to keep the oxen walking straight, it fell to Malora and I to entertain ourselves. To my genuine and much relieved surprise, there was no air of awkwardness between us. She had greeted me in the Silver Shell's great room as if we had parted ways there. Nonetheless, there was a peculiar, playful sparkle in her eyes as we talked our way up the Lord's Highway. A subtle, silent acknowledgment of those hours we had spent in frankest company. Her mischievous glances brightened the morning considerably.

So it went: Through steaming fields redolent of leaf rot, ripening corn, and wet loam. Past meadows bright with tall flowers. Aside wagon trains adorned in sigils painted yellow, brown, and maple-leaf red. Curling up the sides of hillocks like the broad backs of sleeping giants. Walled towns and riverside villages appeared and vanished like mirages in the middle distance.

We passed through two trading posts (they were too small and perfunctory to be called "towns") where Tash stopped briefly to unload crates of milk and cream. As he did, men and women exited their open air shops, buckboard markets, and produce stands to swarm about the wagon. Beatific expressions of hope and religious awe. I dutifully raised my sleeve to _ooh_s and unzipped the Master Sword to _aah_s. Merchants and travelers knelt in the warm dust and paid homage to my flesh.

I can barely describe how fucking weird that felt.

There was an ominous exchange come lunchtime.

Stopped in a glade of willows nestled against an algae-frosted pond, we chomped on cold, hard-boiled cuccoo eggs and Eldin cheese. I would learn to enjoy the slender shape and rich yolks of those eggs.

As I stripped the delicate shell from the second of these, Malora casually asked, "You never talk about the religion of your home, Linus. Why not? What's it like?"

Something about that line of questioning put me on edge, as if it were an invitation into a trap.

As such, I responded with a spineless, "There are a lot of religions back where I come from."

Malora made a clucking noise and said, "_Your _religion, silly."

Sighing, I flicked bits of eggshell into the grass. A long-legged, greenish cricket bounced away from the rain of white shards. "I was raised Christian," I said. My hand rose and I examined the naked, shining surface of the boiled egg. "But – I have to admit that I drifted away from the whole thing, especially after my dad died. That's probably why I don't talk about it much."

Malora repeated the word in her usual, halting path to understanding it: "Chris-chan? Aye . . . aye. What's it like? What gods do ya' worship? Do they really make you . . . ?"

She snapped off the end of the sentence with an overexcited squeak. Tash and Ingo shot me eyebrow-heavy looks of befuddlement. I'd lay even money that the question was supposed to end, _Do they really make you cut part of your pecker off_? Or some such thing.

"It's really, really complicated," I said. "Probably best not to get into it."

"Uncomfortable wi' your own gods, lad?" Ingo rasped. Though I knew the question was pointed as a dirk, I couldn't see anything in the man's eyes. Despite our revealing conversation the night before, he remained a superlatively creepy fucker.

I shook my head and shrugged. "No, it's not like that. It's just . . . very different than the Hylian faith. And since I never really took to it, I'm afraid that I'll just confuse you."

"Oh, come off it," Malora swiped. "It can't be that difficult –"

"And yet it is," I said through a mouthful of egg.

She made an annoyed sound, gave me a look of rebuffed petulance, and said, "It must at least have a symbol, right? Like the Triforce? Can ya' at least tell me about that?"

"Sure. Fine." My hand whipped out and grabbed the first sturdy twig it could find. I found a patch of soft, exposed earth and stabbed the stick into it. Two quick, careless strokes: A crude crucifix appeared in the dirt. "Ta-da!" I announced. "The symbol of that old time religion."

It was meant to be a pithy moment of anticlimax. Instead, Malora leaned over the rough glyph and frowned. Her eyebrows knitted together. "Truly?" she whispered.

"Yeah. For reals," I chuckled. I meant to add, _Not as involved as yours, huh? _but was cut off as Tash and Ingo shuffled over to get their own look at Christianity's most basic symbol. Both shared variations on Malora's expression. Consternation wrinkled their lips.

"Strange . . ." Ingo muttered.

I managed an anxious, "What?"

Malora turned to me with what could only be apprehension simmering in her eyes. She quietly asked, "This ain't a jest, Linus?"

"Why the hell would I joke about something like this? That's the symbol. Plain as day. Trust me – it's no Triforce. Doesn't even have the same symbolic meaning."

She nodded tentatively. "Then you probably wonder why the lot o' us are made a might wary by it."

"Damn right!" I laughed. Nervousness soured each syllable.

The three Hylians' eyes flicked to the others, clearly trying to hash out who was going to say what came next. An eel swam irritably through my gut. I could feel cheese and egg sitting undigested in a lump there.

Finally, Malora huffed and said, "Well: Truth be told, Linus, that's a bit o' a forbidden symbol in Hyrule. Well . . . not _forbidden_. But it's in bad judgment to draw or use it on its own."

"You're shitting me."

"Nay." Shaking heads all around. "See, that symbol carries a bloody weight. It reminds us of a time when madness gripped Hyrule an' thousands o' lives were destroyed as a result."

"I . . . had no idea," I breathed. I glanced at the cross drawn in the dirt, felt a sudden wave of sick embarrassment, and scuffed it into loam with one shoe. A look of pained sympathy contorted Malora's face. She seemed as if she were about to say something, but I interrupted with a half-panicked, "What does it mean? To you, I mean?"

"If you're offended . . ." Malora sputtered.

"No – really. Seriously. Like I said, it's barely even my religion anymore. Besides, it's not even agreed upon how important that symbol even is. Some groups of Christians think it's disrespectful –sinful, even – to display it as a sign of faith." Before this veered the conversation away from the task at hand, I continued, "So – please. Go ahead and tell me what that means to Hylians."

Though she still looked uncomfortable, Malora launched into a recitation of history.

She began, "That there symbol is the same as the sigil o' the Knights of Armos."

"Weren't really knights," Ingo rumbled. "A pack o' heretics, murderers, an' madmen. Din fanatics crazed wi' blood an' slaughter."

"Din fanatics?" I asked.

Malora continued as if Ingo's interruption was an integral part of the story. "They worshipped Din as the 'one true goddess' and insisted that to worship her was to make war and violence. Also, to be clear, at least one o' them _was _a knight – Sir Kline Armos, their founder.

"During the Lost Years – a little over seven-hundred years ago, give or take – Sir Kline got it in his head that he needed to save Hyrule. See, this was just after Ganon's last manifestation. The kingdom still stood in ruins. The cities were just beginning to rebuild. Maps were being redrawn. Famine and disease were commonplace. The throne passed from noble house to noble house without anyone knowing who would actually create the next dynasty. It was a hard time to be alive.

"So Sir Kline started to gather like-minded men – men who loved Din above all else – and created his own army. Soon enough, they were so strong that they were able to challenge the King o' Hyrule himself. They marched on Hylium an' nearly took the city. It was only through a stroke o' luck that Armos himself died in that battle when an arrow struck him through the eye. After that, the Knights of Armos were hunted down by the King's armies, eventually dyin' off entirely. Unfortunately," Malora sighed, "the Knights killed tens o' thousands before they were driven under."

Scratching skeletal fingers through his hair, Ingo produced a dark chuckle. "Ah, Malon dear. You're leavin' out the real juicy parts."

Malora stared daggers at him. Tash, silent all this while, looked a shade mortified.

Ingo hissed, "See, these here 'knights' loved them some Din, but that was all they really could love. There was a hate in their hearts, see. Hate for the crown; hate for temples that refused to recognize Din's primacy; hate for non-Hylians. But what they hated most, above everythin'? The Shiekah. They hated Shiekah so much that they butchered any long-ear they came across. The Knights o' Armos wanted to wipe out every livin' Shiekah an' salt the earth where their villages once stood. Oh, they hated them some gorons n' zora n' fairies too, no doubt. But they never filled no mass graves with any o' them."

Sweet Jesus, I thought.

"Legends say that the Armos were a queer bunch, too," Ingo said. "Came ridin' into towns all decked out in armor made from rocks and carryin' banners made from bones. They wore masks in the early days to hide their faces and later as a mark o' their 'order.' Heard a tale that Armos hisself wore a mask o' sorcerous steel till the day it failed him and he died with an arrow in his brain."

Ingo rested his elbows on his thighs and leaned in close. Conspiratorial. "Know why that there symbol you drew was the sigil o' the Knights?"

I shook my head.

With an ironic yellow grin – the sort of grin every campfire storyteller knows all too well – Ingo whispered, "'Cuz that's how they executed all the people they didn't kill in battle. They strung 'em up on big timber crosses. Let 'em rot on the roadsides. Left whole forests of them to bleach on hills. About as bad a way to go as Ingo can think of."

I shuddered.

It rained hard for a couple hours on that first afternoon out. Ingo pulled long, patchy oilskin dusters from the belly of the wagon and distributed them among us. There were only three at first, so Ingo stomped through the rain without any protection. In the next large town, he bought another raincoat in a tackle shop while local boys and girls clustered around the wagon, bombarding me with questions. By the time the storm passed, the greasy, cloying stink of oiled leather clung to my body like a fungus.

In the rain's wake, the landscape belched up an aromatic, muggy haze that coated everything to the far horizon. Through it, the descending sun took on the aspect of an umber spotlight slowly winking vermilion.

We ascended a gentle mesa and found its top covered by a scrubby, rock-strewn moor. To the west, tethered by a side track to the Lord's Highway, stood a blunt little castle surrounded by a town of stout stone buildings. Tash pulled the wagon to a halt at the crossroads, calling for a last break before the day's final push.

At every point the Lord's Highway branched off into major local roads, one found a respectable number of mercantile stands, carts, and encampments. This junction was no exception. Here were shawled old women selling onions and root vegetables; a lone fairy hawking bottles of something called "Genuine Xen Brand Elixir;" a sullen young man drooped over the back of a wagon full of dubious-looking crockery; and, a venerable stand offering mugs of fruit juice, beer, and other beverages.

After I leaped off the wagon and set to stretching, Tash beckoned for me to follow him. By this point, such gestures held little implicit dread. I followed the plump rancher over to the drink stand, where a sharp-eyed young woman waited expectantly. Tash ordered two beers. I declined. Tash amended his order to one beer and a berry juice. He hefted a mug of suds and handed me a cup full of purple juice that tasted tartly of springtime.

"Hair of the dog, huh?" I said, watching him greedily gulp at his brew.

Tash looked at me over the rim of his mug as if I had just suggested that the sky were pink. I babbled a brief explanation of the phrase, at which he nodded approvingly.

"Aye," he said. "Back in Eldin, we call it, 'A bit o' the venom.' Same basic idea, eh?" Tash slurped and curled his lower lip to clean his mustache of pale yellow foam. He pointed out beyond the highway turnoff, to the squared ramparts of the fortress at the edge of the mesa. "That there's Chovo Keep, it is. Home n' hearth o' Lord Arman Chovo. Not exactly pretty to look at, aye, but Lord Arman's a fine host and a good keeper o' these lands. Oversees 'em with dignity an' honor, like a proper Lord should."

Tash hesitated. He bit his lower lip. His facial hair bristled uncomfortably.

"Linus . . ." he finally muttered. "I ain't been entirely truthful with ya'. There's somethin' about me an' mine that . . . well . . . an' this trip to Hylium aren't just . . ." He stuttered, faltered, and coughed.

In the discomfiting silence that followed, a warm wind moved over the mesa top. The fairy merchant's shrill, overloud voice promised deals, deals, _deals_! A duo of men in plate armor arrived at the junction from the direction of Chovo Keep on horseback. They looked tired and in need of baths.

It fell to me to complete Tash's thought, which came even as he first trailed off.

"Oh!" I laughed. "Man, you don't have to worry about that. Ingo already told me that you're nobles."

Tash's eyebrows lifted. "Urr. He did?" I couldn't tell if his face knotted in consternation or relief. "He did," he said flatly.

A nervous sip of beer. Something in Tash's eyes flared and he turned back to the wagon. There, Malora leaned against the backboard with boredom swimming in her features. Ingo circled the oxen with obsessive eyes. "Oy! Ingo!" Tash yelled. "Ya' could have told me that you already let him in on the nob issue!" It wasn't genuine anger in his voice, but I could tell that he was frustrated with the crew boss.

Ingo blinked. "Ingo did?" Another blink; a moment's remembrance. "Ach. Ingo did. Birdshite!" The gaunt man held out his hands. "All apologies, Tash. It were late an' Ingo were just . . ."

Tash waved the rest of the apology away. "No matter, no matter!" he shouted. "Makes this easier, that's for certain." When he turned back to me, it was with a strange expression that mixed shame with defiant pride. I recalled Ingo's tale of the rancher's muddled feelings regarding his ancestry.

"How much did he tell you?" Tash asked.

"Most all of it, I guess," I shrugged.

He nodded, and then swallowed the rest of his beer. Sliding the mug back over the stand's splintery counter, Tash said, "I hope ya' don't think less o' me for deceivin' you."

"Pffft." I rolled my eyes. "It's not like you _lied_, man. You just left some things out. And honestly? I'd be a little wary too, if what Ingo tells me about most nobles is true."

"Aye, they're a right awful bunch," Tash sighed. "That ain't really it, though. See, I spent most o' my life just bein' a common man, right? Common but successful, aye. I can thank my pa for layin' the foundations o' that success, but I can't deny that havin' to work hard to make the family Lon as well-off as it is now."

He began to amble back toward the wagon, speaking idly as he went. "Were a great honor to reclaim my House's rightful place in the world, Linus. No denyin' that. All the same, I was happier knowin' that I was a man who didn't need a title to make his way in the world. After a few years o' callin' myself Lord Lon, I got sick of it. I still attend the Court an' the Council when I need to, but House Londas were always a minor clan." He glanced back at me meaningfully. "Day to day? I'm more than willing to let it stay that way."

As night fell, the wagon trundled into a ramshackle little village semi-protected by a timber stockade. Bolah Town, as it was apparently called, was not even a quarter the size of Oloro and twice as rough. No greeting party waited for us at the dirt crossroads that passed for Bolah's central square. For that, I was grateful. I had had enough of people mobbing me and trying to get the ink embedded in my skin to bless their fortunes.

We ended up staying the night at a cramped but charming inn called "The Falling Arrow." The proprietors were a plump, middle-aged couple that could have passed for fraternal twins, had they not been married. When they discovered that not only were retainers of House Lon sleeping beneath their roof, but also the fabled Hero of the Triforce, the innkeepers all but had embolisms from delight.

At their kind but forceful insistence, we sat down to a meal of roast beef, baked taro, and plum salad. The smiling, blush-cheeked wife poured gravy over my plate before I had a chance to get a good look at it. As a result, I spent much of the meal pushing mushrooms to the side of my plate as surreptitiously as possible.

At dinner's close, the husband unveiled a bottle of locally distilled whiskey. It burned deliciously as I drained my cup. Hideously powerful, too – three cups of the stuff sent me to my horse-hair mattress undeniably drunk.

I lay there in the moon-dappled dark of the tiny inn room and wondered if I would hear a soft knock at my door. Another late-night visit from Malora Lon. As the minutes ticked by, I listened to the old wooden foundations settling with pops and groans. Outside, tree limbs twitched and sighed in a rolling breeze. A dog barked in challenge; oxen grunted in their pens; horses snorted and whined. Slow anxiety twisted in my gut.

Of course she won't come. After all, it's not like she came last night!

Har har. You droll shithead.

Seriously, though. After a performance like last night's, did you honestly think that she would show up for an encore?

And so on. I stared at the beams crossing the ceiling and stewed neurotically for a time. Eventually, the liquor proved more potent than my worrying and I floated into uneasy sleep.

The next morning, as Tash and Ingo inspected and tended to the oxen, I slipped into Bolah Town's blacksmith shop and purchased a scabbard. It was a sturdy, utilitarian garment of hard leather and banded iron. Twenty Rupees all told, including belt and buckle. Unsure how to don the new garment, I let it dangle from one hand as I hurried to my next destination: a seamstress's shop.

A trio of energetic old women all but knocked themselves over to help me. They peppered me with questions as I picked up three plain, beige tunics. I added a pair of thick wool stockings and, after much deliberation, a loosely-knit hemp skullcap perfect for pulling down over my ears. You better believe that it was green.

Total cost: ten Rupees.

I felt very flush at that moment. Very clever, too. As I donned the cap, I finally felt like I might be able to blend in here.

Taking embarrassed lessons from the Lons, I donned my new clothes and strapped the scabbard to my waist. It felt so unwieldy that I almost stripped it off in frustration, but the weight seemed to balance out once I slid the Master Sword home into its sleeve. Nonetheless, I became more and more irritated by its bumping and riding against the side of my thigh as the day progressed. Though I didn't voice the thought, it came to me that I could probably wear the damn thing over my shoulder, so the scabbard rested diagonally against my spine. Wasn't that how Link was supposed to wear his sword, anyway?

On that second day on the road, a number of messengers came alongside the wagon to deliver news and letters to the Lons. Tash dutifully exchanged rolled and folded sheets of parchment with these men, marking each with a signet stamp dipped in gooey blue ink. The passing of words seldom even slowed the wagon's process, even though it must have occurred at least a dozen times throughout the day. It was apparently a well-practiced horseback ritual.

Smooth plains gave way to hills and grasslands became dense, deciduous forest. We weaved in and out of woodland for most of the day. Valley bottoms were more often than not occupied by garrison posts, decrepit farms, creek-hugging mills, and timber camps. Spines and hummocks of cracked gray stone pierced the treetops.

When we stopped for the day's midday meal, Malora pulled me aside and announced that it was time to remove the stitches from my spear wound. Out came the homemade jar of hooch and her little first aid kit. Tiny scissors glinting sharply. After Malora took out the stitches, a hand mirror revealed that the wound had transformed into a ragged line of puckered, off-white scar tissue. It ran the length of cheekbone beneath my left eye.

"Well," I exhaled, "there goes my modeling career."

Malora's expression of amused befuddlement was priceless.

Down in a swampy gorge, the road ran between ponds like rotten stock pots. Men in straw hats and leather overalls trundled in the shallows. Their hands dipped into mossy water and rose back dripping, fingers clutched about yellow-gray bulbs or wriggling indigo crabs.

The highway skirted a slope covered in orchards of thorny trees with slick black bark. I spied women in heavy smocks and gloves, moving among the branches and snatching dark purple fruit before dropping them into wicker baskets.

A lake passed to the right. The tree-shrouded stone ruins of some massive house passed on the left.

We swung past two more fairy colonies that second afternoon – Tik and Jerr Colonies, if Tash was correct. The wagon rambled within a mile of Jerr Colony, giving me a fine full view of the bizarre structure. Its rounded, iridescent towers rose like castle bastions that had melted into beautiful glass. The central column of the place had to have climbed ten stories into the air. It was difficult to judge exactly how tall it was, given that the colony sprouted in fits and starts from a rocky hillside.

An absolute swarm of fairies bobbed, flitted, streaked, and swooped over the highway as the Lon's wagon approached. Hundreds of tiny willow-the-wisps, hanging in midair like a field of stars out to conquer the daylight. Most glowed a sharp leaf green, but among them were fairies shining blue, red, purple, and even blink-inducing arc white.

They clouded about the wagon as it clunked and crawled down the highway, dozens coming close at a time. Tiny bodies with immense, projecting, static-heavy voices. A headache in every timbre. I expected wares to be flashed, as had been the case with the last colony, but this time the tremulous storm of light brought only questions, declarations, and pious requests.

As we rolled through that country of lights, I ruefully stood, stripped off my tunic, and unsheathed the Master Sword. Flurries of tiny bodies zipped and spun and careered about me. The scudding breeze of soft wing beats tussled my hair and fluttered against my skin. Buzzing voices rose in praise; in awe; in triumph. Miniscule hands, silhouetted in multicolor radiance, carved the Triforce midflight. We ended up stopping the wagon in order to allow all gathered to fly in for their own look at the Hero.

Jerr Colony's elders – a trio of green-shrouded forms in elaborate little robes – pushed through the chaotic crowd to entreat us to stay and take supper with them, Tash politely declined. We soon continued on our way. Some of the Jerr fairies kept pace with the wagon, shouting, "GLORY!" and, "PRAISE BE!" and, "GOOD LUCK, YOU BEAUTIFUL BASTARD!"

Fucking _bizarre_, I thought, as the last of these glittering hangers-on vanished into the trees.

We crossed into Lanayru Province without ceremony, guards in hilltop outposts watching our passage with blithe eyes. The wagon plunged solidly into forested land.

About an hour before sunset, Tash pulled the reins and directed the wagon onto a turnoff that led west off the Lords' Highway.

"Hey. Isn't Hylium that way?" I commented, pointing north.

Tash nodded vigorously and said, "Aye. We're all three or four hours from the Old Walls. Edge o' the city, as it were."

"So, why turn off here?"

"Father _always _stays at Count Fletcher's estate when he comes north," Malora said with a trace of a mocking grin. "If ya' can call it that."

Gruffly, Tash Lon said, "My daughter's a wee bit unimpressed with my good friend Fletcher's holdin's. She should've seen the house ol' Tash had to grow up in. Give 'er a fine sense o' scale, it would." Seemingly over his annoyance, he continued, "The Count is frugal fellow, he is. No denyin' that. But he's rich an' powerful in Hylium town, believe you me. He just don't like to show off all his wealth ostentatious-like. Unlike some o' the other new rich, mind ya'.

"In any event, I like to get off the roads before dark. Especially this close to Hylium proper. There're more bandits in these woods n' glens than you'd believe, lad."

Malora chuckled in that manner that only children indulging their embarrassing parents can achieve. "Deep down, father is terrified o' the big city." She nudged her father in the bicep. "Ain't that right, pa?"

He scowled at her.

"Ah come off it," Malora cajoled. She gave him a good-natured pat on his bald crown and said, "I'm just teasin'. But really, father – do you think these bandit armies would really be so active right under the nose o' the Civs? Besides, these woods are so full o' estates an' cottages an' mills that you couldn't go two steps without runnin' into someone's garden."

Tash grunted, "Pmmpf. Fine. As you say, as you say. All the same, Count Fletcher's door is always open to me an' mine. I don't know about you, dear daughter, but I would rather sleep on a nice Mattress Guild bed wi' a bit o' good food in my belly. Instead o' hoofin' it into the city after dark, boardin' the beeves, openin' up our flat, getting' a fire goin', cookin' supper . . ."

"Aye, aye," Malora said. Her irises rolled melodramatically. "I understand. I do!" She turned to me and said decisively, "It's very boring, though. Nice. But boring."

This new road twisted deeper into the woods. The light thinned and fell the color of summer peaches. Somewhere over the hillsides, thunder grumbled as if it were prepping its voice for a fuller concert yet to come. Lantern-light and torches shone through the creeping shadows – sole indicators of the houses, compounds, cabins, and estates that littered the Lanayru woodlands. The sky blushed purple between dark clusters of leaves.

Soon enough, Tash turned us off this main road and onto a narrow, well-maintained drive that descended into a shallow valley by switchbacks. Beyond a wall of sentinel-standing cedar and imposing pine, we came into view of Count Fletcher's estate.

"Eccentric" was one way to describe it. Beyond a front yard of packed earth stood a massive, roughshod house. Its entrance steps were blocks of local granite, but that was about the only stone that I could see in the entirety of the structure. The rest was a web of planks, beams, spars, and decorative curls of patchwork wood. Spines and illogical sprays of plankwork reached out beyond the walls, giving the entire manor the look of a half-finished wooden porcupine.

My architect's eyes blinked at the nonsensical facade, but I couldn't help but admit that the structure was at least built soundly on a brick foundation. It also followed a decent central design pattern – within the ornamental explosion that coated the outside of the house were well-placed windows and an alcove that half-hid the main entrance. Above, a roof of comma-shaped clay tiles was layered in a style that was almost Italian. The timbers that held up that roof were raw, huge, and rough-cut, but also looked as if they could support the foot of God if need be.

I could see hints of outbuildings behind the main house. Stables; jakes; a perfunctory barn; sheds with purposes incomprehensible to me. White swirls of steam and smoke emitted from a tin chimney atop the nearest of these – a long, low, mud-brick building that seemed to melt directly into the earth. Lamps burned in its green glass windows.

Count Fletcher, apparently made aware of our coming by one of the messengers engaged during the day, greeted us in the yard. He was an egg-shaped man of declining years, with a bird's nest of white hair and raven-dark eyes. At his side was his much younger wife, whose spindly form was concealed beneath a shawl and heavy layers of petticoat. Behind both of them, waiting in the entranceway of the house, were a pair of servants. A straight-backed, severe housekeeper and a butler so young and frazzled that he didn't remotely look the part.

The Count stepped away from his companions and held up a paddle of a hand. "Lord Lon!" he cried. For all the avian in him, Fletcher had a deep, brassy voice that carried across the yard. His grin was full and dimly yellow. "Hulloo, fellow! Welcome back, welcome back!"

"Hail, good Count!" Tash laughed. "Might me an' mine impose upon yer household this evenin'? It's just that we've come so far and are so very tired . . ."

Count Fletcher cackled and waved his hand in a scrubbing motion. "Oh come off it, Tashiel old son. You," he leveled those shining little eyes on me, "and all your _family_ are always welcome here."

Tash, Malora, and I disembarked and strode the remaining distance to meet the Count's retinue. As we each took his arm, Ingo led the exhausted-looking oxen around the corner of the house. Count Fletcher's grip on my arm was vast and firm, but not aggressive. As he greeted me formally, he also seemed to be sizing me up. Calculating a good market value, perhaps.

"I have heard some rather astonishing rumors about you, my boy," he said. With raised eyebrows, Count Fletcher smiled, "Perhaps you can help us sift the fact from the fiction this evening?"

Once the requisite niceties were through, the Lons and I were given over into the care of the house matron and butler. Neither was friendly with me, instead offering to take my bag with expressions that told me they expected it to be full of dead rats. I almost balked, but remembered at the last moment that the precious Master Sword was currently riding on my hip. I relinquished the black nylon duffle with a sensation that was somewhat nostalgic, but mostly relieved.

Despite the sensible construction of its foundations, the house's floor plan was as confusing and ramshackle as the exterior ornaments. A front receiving room and foyer shunted into a labyrinth of narrow hallways, sitting rooms, studies, and parlors. Side staircases seemed to appear at random, vanishing again like architectural hobgoblins.

Small, high-set lanterns revealed tapestries and framed watercolor paintings along the walls. In some of the rooms, I glimpsed mounted skulls and preserved heads adorning brass plates. Grim little hunting trophies. A whole audience of ceremonial masks lined the wallboards of a back hallway.

Thus, it came as a great relief when the uninformative tour concluded at a flight of stairs. The stern-faced matron showed me up to the very top floor, which was taken up by two sizable bedrooms. Mine was to be a loft room that ran under the house's top eaves. As the housekeeper opened the loft's door, a little cloud of dust detached from the central rafter and floated to the floorboards.

"It has not been used in . . . _some months_," said the matron, her lips atwist. She spoke with a brogue-laden accent that I'd not yet heard. "Allow me to prepare the bed and basin for you, sir. Why don't you wash up before Penelle calls for dinner?"

That brick outbuilding turned out to be a private bathhouse. Much of the facility was actually sunken below ground level, which explained the building's squat, kiva-like design. Through the rickety front door of the bathhouse was a short flight of stone stairs. My nostrils saturated with the smells of old sweat, high summer humidity, river cattails, hot iron, damp stone, and charcoal.

Four large washtubs waited in alcoves along the walls. Each was thick oak with a steel bottom. Below the tubs were wood furnaces that needed to be stoked some hours before in order to get the bathwater nice and hot enough for guests. Evidently, the help had been hard at work before our arrival.

The steaming water that waited in the basin had an odd green tinge to it. Vapors rolling up off the surface carried the smell of vegetation and heavy minerals. No matter: Any bath looked like liquid heaven in this place. I washed with gritty brown soap in one hand and a scrub brush in the other. Stinging gray suds ran from my hair and over my eyelids. Skimming a hand along my increasingly scratchy chin and cheeks, I suddenly regretted not packing a razor along with the decoy underwear.

Heh. It's not like I had planned on using any of that, of course. Why complicate it?

When I returned to the loft bedroom, I found a set of clothes folded on the bed. A button-down vest and loose trousers, both cut from a shimmering, airy blue material. Silk, I realized. Or something very like it.

Huh, I thought. Complimentary pajamas. I tested the mattress and found it to be a soft, springy material completely different than the hair mattress I had used the night before. What service!

Another evening, another fete.

In a dining room that smelled of greasy cooking and unfamiliar tree sap, we sat down to praise the goddesses and fill our bellies to bursting. Now somewhat used to Hylian hospitality, I paced myself accordingly.

While I skipped the "rock fungus soup" – begging an allergy – the rest of the fare went down easily and amiably. Spicy roasted cuccoo; a grape and rice salad; ubiquitous but hearty black bread.

Alon, the Fletchers' wild-haired butler, poured the wine liberally. Having learned my lesson at the Falling Arrow, I decided to drink said vino conservatively. In the balance, I got to watch Tash Lon and Count Fletcher get moderately drunk. Malora's cheeks perked with a cabernet-reddened, carefree grin.

After dinner, Tash, Ingo, and Count Fletcher pulled me into a dim study to drink goblets of whiskey and debrief regarding the "Hero Situation." I nursed my cup and crouched forward in a leather chair so ancient it felt like I was reclining on a mummy. For what must have been a couple hours, the men lit pipes and gulped spirits as they listened to me answer their questions.

A soft rain began to plink away at the house. Cool, damp puffs of wind ran down the hallways. Lightning flashed through the windowpanes and painted the raw walls white as death.

At some point in the conversation, Count Fletcher's features contorted. His face became a pinched mask of lines in the flickering candlelight.

"I have read of almost every nation beyond the borders of Hyrule, theoretical as they may be," he growled. "Never in any of my studies have I ever heard of such a place as this Los Angeles!"

"I'm pretty sure it's on the opposite side of the world," I recited. "As in, literally opposite. As far as you can travel around a globe without starting back."

"Why is it, then," Count Fletcher grumbled, "that you can speak perfect Hylian?"

"Or not-so-perfect," Ingo muttered.

At this, I could only shake my head. I blew out a frustrated breath and said, "Man, I don't know. To me, it sounds like you guys speak almost-perfect _English_. For all I know, it's some side-effect of the spell that brought me here." Something whistled and lit up in my brain. "Wait – Malora said something about fairies being able to speak Hylian only through magic, right?"

Confused nods all around. A sudden brightening came to Tash and Count Fletcher's features. The absorption of what I had implied.

Ingo cackled lowly and shook his head, "That don't explain why you still speak like a godsdamned lunatic half the time. If some hex or spell were translatin' between us, Ingo thinks it'd be doing a better job."

Ingo: Wet blanket. Captain Bringdown. Lord Buzzkillington.

The dampened conversation spiraled into small talk and idle speculation on all the mysteries I had either shared or deliberately left unanswered.

By the time I lurched back through the door to my bedroom, the tinkle of rain over the house had deepened into a barrage, and then into a rippling, ceaseless roar. As the loft was settled just beneath the roof, I heard every damned drop hit those clay tiles. I listened to streams of rainwater flowing down the curved troughs of tilework, sounding for all the world like a faucet pouring into a ceramic sink.

I slipped off my clothes and, feeling a little silly, donned the blue nightclothes left by the housekeeper. The trousers were too short and ballooned ridiculously near the hips. Nonetheless, the cloth was so smooth and pleasing that, within a few minutes, I barely even noticed the extra material.

I moved to blow out the lantern burning across the room. I paused. I thought I had heard something – something smothered beneath the deluge dumping just over my head. I cocked an ear and felt an eyebrow rise with inquisitive anticipation.

There – again. A _clunk_. Something dropped on heavy wood. _Clunk, ka-clunk. Clunk._

My eyes widened.

Oh!

Not "clunk." _Knock_.

I wheeled about, cautiously tread over the old floorboards, and cracked open the loft door.

In the dim-as-a-cave hallway beyond, two blue eyes blinked in the lantern's light. A hand rose.

"Hello," Malora said. "May I come in?"

As good as it felt to put those pajamas on, I assure you it was nothing compared to taking them off.

When Malora Lon pushed my shoulders into the mattress and straddled me, her bloomers dangling from one toe, I whispered, "I didn't think you'd come back."

"To your bed, ya' mean?" she panted.

"Yeah."

Malora grinned and arched backward, holding my look with eyes as blue and wild as a tropical sea. "Why wouldn't I take the opportunity to share a night with the bleedin' Hero?"

I fidgeted, finding it difficult to hold her gaze. "Y-you know," I stammered. "The other night. The, um, premature enthusiasm on my part."

She blinked and tilted her head. The flesh of her thighs was so very warm against my belly. She smelled of salt and wine and pheromones run amuck.

At last, Malora snorted, slapped her hand to her lips, and doubled forward with the effort of suppressing her manic laughter.

"Oh Linus, ya' poor lad. I'd be a sight less happy if I hadn't come to terms with a man finishin' long before I do. It's a fact o' life! An' it most definitely," she leaned forward and kissed me, "certainly," and kissed me, "_absolutely _don't change the way I feel about ya'." And she kissed me.

"But," I whined, "what happened the other night was some really weak shit. It's totally not –"

"Ah, come off it!" Malora giggled. "The second fella I tried to take to bed lost his load as he was takin' off his trousers. Compared to him, you were King Andre the Lover."

Malora said, "Forget all that, Linus. Tomorrow, you enter the greatest city in the world. For tonight, let us keep things fine and simple."

I smiled weakly.

We fucked with languorous desperation as the rain pounded down on the roof tiles. A much better performance provided by all participants. Afterward, we held each other beneath the blankets and waited for each bass concussion of thunder with shaky anticipation. Later, once the rainstorm ended and the night filled with its fragrant aftermath, Malora kissed my forehead and slipped out of the loft.

I stretched beneath the top covers, new nightclothes supple against my skin. I closed my eyes with a smile on my lips.


	25. 25

**25**

I dreamed that I stepped barefoot over broken bottles, Styrofoam chunks, condom packages, and candy bar wrappers. My breath escaped as delicate gray fog. I passed between cracked temple pillars of concrete, rising to a roaring ceiling.

Ahead: Flickering lights in the vastness. Fires tended by charcoal-sketch figures. I pressed forward on stiff legs stippled with gooseflesh.

Horns belching in the distance. The muffled staccato of steel rolling, purring, crashing, carousing. Night pistons. In the gloomglow, someone coughed wetly, over and over, as if drowning.

Here was the first of the lights – a triangular campsite, arranged about a respectable blaze. Flames flowed and parted and cracked into rising sparks. Orange fireflies drifting in the dark. The fire churned in the belly of an improvised furnace – a squat, battered, grease-streaked trashcan.

Two figures sat at angles to this pyre, milky streamers of breath flowing from their lips and nostrils. Both were black men of ambiguous years. One was skeletally thin; the other, merely rail-thin. One bearded patchily; the other scarred about the cheeks and neck by acne or chickenpox. Respectively, they wore a dingy tangerine ski jacket and a tweed overcoat that may have been fashionable at some point thirty years in the past.

Across from them, at a close but cautious distance from their campfire, was a low tent constructed from a tarp, duct tape, and repurposed aluminum poles. It crinkled and billowed as I approached.

For some seconds, neither man saw me. I paused in my shuffling walk and cocked my head to listen as they spoke quickly, furtively.

". . . I mean, it ain't so bad. Nothing we ain't gone through before."

A snort. "Nigga, it is _August_. Ain't supposed to be this cold."

"Yeah."

"I mean, I heard of Indian Summers and Strawberry Springs and whatever, but I ain't never heard of no false winters. Not like this."

"Just a cold snap, Walt. We'll live. Used to get 'em all the time in Boston."

"The hell you say! Not in goddamn August!"

"Truth, son. One time when I was about ten years old – oh, hey. Hang on. Got a newcomer here. Hey, newcomer."

Two pairs of wide, sunken eyes had turned to take me in. I nodded drunkenly. "Hey."

The bearded man blinked erratically and said, "You gonna catch your death of cold in clothes like that, newcomer. You comin' or goin'? Mission worker, maybe? College boy?"

The other fellow shuddered into his mess of tweed and croaked, "Careful, Walt."

"I . . . think . . ." I murmured. "I think I need to sit . . ."

"Aw shit, man. This one's fuckin' high!" the tweed-swaddled man laughed.

A dismissive flip of boney fingers. "Manners, Jerry. Where'd we be if we didn't get a bit of hospitality back in the day?" A honk of derisive laughter. "Sure, son. Sure. Take a load off yo'self. Don't get no ideas about staying the night, though – we don't have room. You'll have to find someplace else to lie down."

He indicated a bowed and sagging milk crate sitting a yard back from the fire. I came closer, surveyed the crate's plastic frame as if it formed an arcane pattern, and then planted my thighs on it. I shivered. With doomsayer trepidation, I extended my hands toward the crackling, smoke-spitting bin. The bones and pads of my fingers tingled unpleasantly.

Far away, a horn sounded like the herald of an apocalyptic future. A bray overlaying the rhythm of eighteen wheels grinding asphalt.

For some minutes of dream-time, I just swayed there. My eyes blinked into the dirty flames and tried to ignore this place – this horrible, dim sanctuary of some perverse filth-god. That god's priests, resting in rusty lawn chairs held together with tape, looked at me and seemed to gauge my presence. Their eyes were round, watchful, bloodshot, distant. Their skin and hair spoke of sweat and dust. Around them floated a thin miasma of armpit odor and something even sourer – perhaps even sinister. They were alien, ungainly acolytes. Pilgrims from a ramshackle country.

"Hey."

I looked up.

"You okay, son?" asked the bearded man. "You don't look so good."

"Told you, man. He's some white boy who couldn't handle his H or meth or whatever it is he's fucking nodded out on right now," opined the man in tweed.

I shook my head forcefully. "This is . . . a really weird dream . . ." I whispered.

"See?"

"I dunno, Jerry," the bearded man said. His mouth twitched in some involuntary spasm. "Those are some weird clothes, newcomer. You come out of a clinic? A hospital, maybe?"

"I was . . ." I slurred. My vision swam. Blacks bled chiaroscuro into oranges. "I was in . . ."

"Look at 'em." A half-furtive aside: "Boy's got some scars on 'em. Think he's a soldier? A vet out of hospital?"

"Could be. We could take 'em over to David. If David's having a good night, that is. See if he can get this kid some help. Vet to vet, you know?"

"That's actually a fuckin' good idea. I have a bad feeling about this."

Through rolling worlds; through trash-stinking smoke, I blurted, "Where am I?"

A moment's incredulous silence, punctuated by the cement roar of the sky. Something in the trashcan popped and settled in on itself. Cinders burst into the rust-rimmed night.

"He's bad fucking off," the tweed man whistled. He half-rose from his chair, but at some odd signal from this compatriot he fell back with an annoyed, "Boof."

The bearded man leaned forward, dark eyes darting, and asked, "How long you been on the streets, son?"

"A couple days, I guess," I managed.

"And you don't know where you are?"

I shook my head.

"Shit, son. I mean," he passed gnarled fingers through tufts of coal-colored hair, "you under the turnpike. Lotta us here. Big camp. Street folk. All kinds, from all walks. There are worse places to end up, but we all got a bit of experience before we came here. You know?"

I didn't.

"The turnpike . . ." I muttered sleepily. "Is that . . . in Hyrule?"

The two men stared at me as if I had just claimed to be from the future.

Tweed-man: "Shit. This motherfucker's so fucked up he can barely see."

Beard-man: "Kid – where you think you are? What town?"

"I don't know," I said miserably. I shivered badly and felt my teeth begin to clack against each other.

A big breath. Fog in the oil- and exhaust-stinking night. Out beyond the columns, red lights blinked like fairies trapped in glass.

"Son, you're in Baltimore."

"Baltimore," I repeated.

"The one and only."

"Oh," I said. Then: "I'm from L.A." My voice was small. Childlike.

"You a long way from home," the bearded man chuckled. "What are you doing out here, son? Were you deployed? Back from overseas?"

Through the thick, cold curtain of dreamstuff, I felt an awful cogwheel click forward in my mind. I remembered a moment of insensate horror and existential panic as I stood in the shadow of endless, colossal trees. A terror recalled in the flesh, reverberating through my skull like a ringing gong. It echoed in me then and I felt tears well up in my eyes.

"Oh God!" I choked.

Where was the dream?

"Walt, man. You wanna take him over to David? That fucker creeps me out."

Where was the dreamer? And who was he?

I attempted to draw my knees up and press them hard against the fluttering core of my body. All I accomplished was to teeter fecklessly and almost topple off my milk crate.

"I . . . I dunno, man. Something about this don't feel right. Maybe . . . maybe we should flag down some police."

Who dreams? What is the dream? And where does it end?

"Man, _fuck _the police."

Icy dreams. Diesel nightmares. Chattering horror. Worlds and kingdoms of ruin.

"Just take him over to – whoa. Wait a fucking. Whoa!"

There was a sound: Bark ripped slow from a sapling.

"What the fuck? What the fuck! What the fuck! WHAT THE FUCK!"

There was a smell: Oak embers, smoking low in a copper brazier.

"Jesus Christ. Oh, oh fuck me. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want . . .!"

There were sensations: Wind on a late summer day. Jumping from a tree's high branches. The tickle of anticipation just before plunging through a lake's still surface.

And it all faded.

I woke in the still, wet heat of the loft room outside Hylium. Silver and red moonglow sifted through the cracked window. Night insects trilled. The covers bunched behind my back.

Blinking in the lonely warm dark, I felt something simultaneously horrible and unnamable slither beneath my heart. When I moved to pull the blanket up over my body, something crinkled audibly at my feet. My chest heaved.

My toes had brushed what could only be the waxy contours of a bubblegum wrapper.

With greedy viper movements, I twisted in the bed. A snap, a crackling. Memories of dream voices. Soot, fires, garbage. I snatched up the thing that proved it was all real.

Please let it be real.

When I brought the wrapper up to the moonlight, my face went slack. That hideous anti-sensation passed through me. A spiritual emptying. The object that had tickled against my toe was:

A leaf.

A small, crumbling, desiccated leaf. I let it drop over the side of the bed and into darkness.

I curled up on the spongy mattress, too tired and confused to cry.


	26. 26

**26**

Was it anticipation that wrung my heart as I completed my journey? Or was it fear?

After the previous night's bizarrely vivid dream, my nerves were keyed up to their highest levels. Its images played over and over through my skull as I rose, washed, and dressed in the misty dawnglow.

_Son, you're in Baltimore_.

I wondered achingly if it meant anything other than that I was homesick. If I could learn anything useful from the dream – whether it be for sanity for not – I needed to try my damnedest to remember it in full. The difficulty turned out not to be in the recalling, but in the _ease _of that recall. For all the groggy indifference that had accompanied it, the dream remained stubbornly realistic. As I mulled it, I even felt a dank chill pass over my flesh. Bits of tactile memory called up by the act of remembrance.

Impossible.

I scowled into the polished nickel mirror on the bedroom dresser. The fresh scar on my face undulated with the expression.

Linus, I thought, you are going to have to be a lot more fucking flexible on the definitions of "possible" and "impossible" from here on out.

My reflection nodded in grim agreement.

We left the Fletcher estate an hour after sunrise with a rich meal in our stomachs. Despite their deep imbibement of wine and whiskey the night before, Ingo and Tash were damned near chipper as we got underway. Amusing little bursts of excitement moved their feet. We climbed out of the Count's private valley and came again to the damp, shining clay of the highway.

On this warm and dew-shimmering morning, the wide road filled and emptied as if to the beating of some unfathomable commercial heart. Wagon trains that had to stretch for a half-mile rolled opposite us. Whole towns worth of foot travelers entered and exited the road via turnoffs and gates manned by bored-looking soldiers. Entire herds of horses, milk cows, goats, oxen, and ungulates unidentifiable traversed the roads. The morning grew feculent with the reek of dung and mildewed hay and plants giving up the night's moisture to the growing heat.

As I had noticed for the past few days, traffic ebbed and flowed around cutoffs leading to villages or forts. This close to the city, these increasingly took on the aspect of suburban enclaves, their residents appearing through gatehouses to trade, take visitors, and start on their own excursions into the capital. Stone barriers and bamboo fences abutted the roadsides.

There were strange mills in this country, sitting like smoking porcupines on leveled hilltops. About these buildings, the forestland twisted like a congregation of weird supplicants. Waterwheels turned on summits where none possibly could.

Terrace gardens; hillside plantations; green-shrouded towers; garish tent cities; arboreal farmsteads. Ordered, ascending ranks of berry bushes and nut trees. Storehouses both fresh and decrepit. Adobe towns clustered on slopes like troops of defiant monkeys. Tile rooftops glowed red and orange in the easterly sun.

Two hours into the day's trip, the road shimmied into the depths of heavily wooded valley bottom. Mist capered through the undergrowth. The moist smell of moss permeated the shade. Blue-feathered herons stalked about walled ponds. Unknowable amphibians chirped in chorus with beetles and slow-creeping katydids.

Tash gestured about and said, "There's a lot o' private game preserves down in these parts." A jovial snort. "Almost to the Walls now!" he announced happily.

Trees began to grow huge – some almost as overwhelming as the monstrosities of the Lost Woods. Twisting colonies of vines ascended their trunks. Daylight went weak and milky beneath their bows. Here, even the other foot traffic took on a somber air. When carts and wagons turned from the highway, jagged-looking men materialized to examine documents and grant passage.

As we made our way between the trees like castle towers, a troop of stiff men marched past. Five rows of three abreast. They wore peaked helmets of iron and leather. Their torsos were covered in plain but heavy breastplates. Each carried a formidable curved wooden shield bearing two insignia – the golden, stylized thunderbird of the royal dynasty and a much simpler blue brand of two diagonal lines meeting a single horizontal one.

"Soldiers?" I asked.

Malora shook her head, eyes glued to the men as they tromped down the other side of the road. "The Hylium Civil Militia. Special marshals and guardsmen that work only in the capital." She glanced at me nervously and said, "They must have reinstituted the long patrols outside the city limits."

Before I could press her for more information, Malora emitted a high _Squee! _of delight and pointed east of the highway. I traced the invisible ray implied by that finger, out into the ferns and scrub creepers. For a long moment, I sat confused as I tried to figure out what the hell had excited her. Just as I was about to make an ass of myself asking, I finally perceived a massive rock, nestled in a mound of dead leaves and covered with a garish gridwork of Hylian graffiti. Years of slashed black and green paint gave the marker the look of a molar that had gone rotten and tumbled out of a giant's mouth.

Out in the trees beyond this first benchmark, I could just make out other jutting stones. These also bore indecipherable slogans. More appeared. Among them were forms and structures that summoned in me uncomfortable memories. Old marble shapes buried in antediluvian woods. An acrid recollection of terror and pursuit.

So, these were the Old Walls. Cracked teeth and spines of whitish-gray stone. Symbol-carved chunks of the stuff that formed accidental blockades. Full, ribbed portions of mighty walls that had once risen fifty feet into the air.

All rain-eaten. All cracked and pitted. All streaked with lichen, dappled with parasite shrubs, and carpeted with moss.

The highway passed between the ancient shapes as if in humble deference. Where sections of wall still stood sentinel, the road snaked and curved to avoid them.

"This used to be the edge o' the city," Malora declared, "in the days before the Great Sack. That happened durin' Ganon's last war, by the way."

I craned my neck to get a look at what appeared to be a titanic, toppled pillar buried in the underbrush. "Hylium was invaded?"

"Perhaps?" Malora said tentatively. "No one's quite sure what happened. Only that Ganon somehow razed the entire capital to the ground. They say that the old royal palace was actually located somewhere around here – up on one o' the hills or buttes in this country."

"What happened to it?"

Malora shrugged and said, "Some say that one o' the old dynasties moved it stone by stone, out to the Isle o' Kings."

Ingo, who had been ambling like a vagabond beside the oxen, called up, "Aye. But most just think that the whole castle were reduced to a pile o' molten glass." He cast a baleful storyteller's eye back up at us. "Some say that Ganon called down all the fires o' Hell to obliterate the whole town."

Good ol' Ingo. Always great for a laugh.

Some way past the ruins of the Old Walls, a large building crouched across the highway. Purple and gold banners clutched its walls. Travelers bunched up about iron gates in its center. Legionary soldiers manned the entranceways at road level and watched from parapets about its roof. Lantern-jawed Civil Militia flipped through travelers' parchments and rummaged about their backboards.

A customs way station, then. Please declare all foreign fruits and vegetables. Heh.

We took our turn in the queue, submitting to inspection by a portly militiaman who was a little too enthusiastic about his job. As the guardsman set about his whistling work, Tash dismounted and nonchalantly walked through a side door in the nearest gatehouse. Some minutes later, he reappeared with a smirk painting his lips.

When the rancher hoisted himself back up to the reins, he said, "Seems we're to get an escort into town."

"Oh?" I said. Inevitable apprehension churned.

"Sheldon goin' to provide some boys to walk with us?" Ingo asked idly.

Tash rubbed at his mustache, stared impatiently at the buckboard full of baled hay in front of us, and said, "Nay." His eyebrows arched mischievously. "The _King _is sendin' lads. Some legionary folk are to meet us up the road yonder. Sheldon says we'll know 'em when we see 'em."

Everyone seemed impressed with this. I know I was. However, I'm not sure that my companions felt the dank slurp of dread that oozed through my stomach.

Past the customs house, crossroads sliced over the highway like the regular intervals of a sewn hem. The glossy trunks of those massive trees thinned in number and in girth. Deep forest preserves yielded to cultivated woodlands, vineyards, and the sprawl of plantation land. The highway wound like a lazy brook through a leaf-blown country. We climbed between hills like the curve of a great trough.

Marching rows of orchards flanked the road. Scents of overripe fruit, blossoms, and tea leaves. Delicate branches arched overhead like the trusses of a tunnel. There was a sensation of entering a twilight realm – a liminal province between city and non-city. For a moment, all felt quiet. Warm wind, birdsong, and insect chatter stitched together the daylight.

From this mist-green entryway, we burst into sunlight and open sky. A blue vault upheld by hilltops and distant towers. Birds like gray heralds soared across the firmament.

The oxen trundled to a halt with snorts of disapproval. Though I never looked away from the sight before me, I knew that all faces turned to me, grinning.

We had emerged on the slopes of a mighty river valley. Far to the north and west, the shining silver lines of two rivers snaked from between bluffs and twisted down into the valley bottom. They met at a bulbous junction – a big, shimmering lake like a liquid mirror. From this immense watery lens, a new river tumbled out like an exclamation amid a glittering tower of spray. It proceeded southeast at a lazy zigzag, eventually vanishing past a gateway line of rock faces.

About these gleaming waterways, the city of Hylium spread from horizon to horizon.

My lungs tightened. My fingers froze. My toes made fists in their stockings. My thighs trembled with a pleasurable chill.

Hylium was a polymath city, etched against the earth and sky like something set forth by a maniac god. It climbed up hillsides and crept through shallows. A conquering tide of stone and wood and steel. Walls of brick, piled rock, adobe, rough timber, concrete, and God knew what other materials reared up on all sides. Smoke plumed from innumerable vents and drifted eastward as if on lazy pilgrimage. Streets and boulevards and squares formed an endless webway through an undulating quilt of buildings.

And _what _buildings! Even at this great distance – many miles and more from the center of the city – I could make out structures that twisted my guts and set fire to dusty bits of my brain. Jigsaw roofs; temple domes; spiraling columns; alabaster turrets; dingy stretches of billowing canvas; facades of brick in tessellated rainbow hues; rounded ornamental bastions; splintery colonnades; shaped rails and frameworks of iron; gray slabs of granite like whole mountainsides.

Hulking edifices cast shadows that left whole neighborhoods in eternal eclipse. Sprawling foundations grew smokestacks like brick forests. Open-air, hammer-beam arches stretched above mercantile arcades. Brick monoliths rose up and looked like nothing so much as primitive housing projects. Tens of thousands of smaller buildings tumbled across the city like lime-washed worshippers on parade. They crowded to the more titanic structures as acolytes before vermiculate idols.

Among these were spires like a thousand Notre Dammes and a hundred Sagrada Familias. Black spikes of iron pierced skyward. A neo-Gothic uprising that had long since imposed its own order. More ornate towers and steeples than I could possibly ever count. An empire of cathedrals and minarets.

Even in those first moments, I attempted to note and decipher the city's most recognizable landmarks. My eyes traced the vaguely discernible boundaries of districts and the imposing outlines of their great buildings.

I lingered on the onion minarets of a cyclopean structure sandwiched between the western rivers. A striated central dome bulged like the bald pate of a buried titan.

I marveled at the vapor-spewing towers of a complex clinging to the easternmost hills.

My attention roved to the eastern river and the strange, conical buildings that grew next to it like a species of giant space fungus.

To the north and west of those bizarre structures, not far from where the lake sluiced back into river, stood an egg-colored fortress that looked like it belonged in an earlier and more savage era. Within its walls and bastions, a whole another town grew sequestered from the rest of the city.

Somewhere north of that huge central lake, octagonal towers rose what had to be twenty stories from their foundations. At least three of identical size and shape. They stood as monolithic signposts to the town's northern frontier.

The green-gold shimmer of a pair of fairy colonies caught my eye. One grew like a huge, blown-glass cactus in southeastern reaches of the valley. Another stood almost completely opposite from its cousin, rising from amidst the sprawl of the northwestern river's shores. Even at this distance, I could tell that this second, multi-towered colony was dotted with decidedly unfairlylike stonework, sprouting its very own forest of steeples. Pennants the size of footballs fields flew from its upper reaches.

I saw now that the sky above Hylium churned not only with flocking birds, but also with the coming and goings of headache-inducing numbers of fairies. Most were discernible only as hot bursts of movement against clouds and through banks of industrial smoke. Others careened recklessly through the aether at full glow. Sparks of mad color ripping across that dusty field of blue.

In the broad center of Hylium, the junction lake lapped at a shoreline of moss-green parkland. Though it was difficult to discern individual details from this vantage point, I could see the bold lines of bridges extending from these parks and out to a large island sitting lonely in the water. From this island sprouted a dark stone urchin of peaked towers, mammoth arches, and walls to withstand the wrath of gods. Parapets like disembodied talons ringed its perimeter. A structure at once impressive and foreboding.

I breathed in air full of a dozen kinds of smoke and heady with promise. A hitch drew tight in my throat.

Hylium. Immediate, imperious, imperative. Capital and heart of Hyrule. A sun-dappled skyline of vertical stone and pearlescent towers.

I murmured, "I think I've dreamed of this."

I felt Malora's fingers close over mine. She squeezed my hand gently.

"Oy! Move that bloody thing! Some o' us've got someplace to buggerin' go!"

My body bunched and recoiled as a boxy, paint-shedding wagon tore past us to the left. Bony draft horses pulled the vehicle with all the enthusiasm of death camp prisoners. Their bearded drover stood in his seat and shook a chapped fist in our direction. Piles of lumber clunked at his back.

Malora sighed through her nose and favored me with a wan smile. "Well," she said, "I guess that's welcome to Hylium."

"Best heed the fellow's advice," Ingo called back. "If we don't keep movin', folk might get an inklin' as to who's really ridin' with us. An' then where will we be?"

The crew boss thrust his hands into his overall pockets and ambled slowly down the dusty highway, trailing laughter. Tash rolled his eyes and started the oxen after. I self-consciously yanked my cap tighter against my head and adjusted its edges over the tops of my ears.

The wagon proceeded north through suburbs of merchant estates and whitewashed villas. Fruit trees rustled in walled gardens. Smoke that smelled of bread and bacon fat tumbled from high chimneys. Groundskeepers and house servants with rug beaters watched us from the corners of their eyes.

As we descended the slope toward valley floor and city proper, Malora attempted a brief crash course in geography. She pointed out the urban waterways and said, "Those're the three rivers o' Hylium." Her finger vaguely traced the line twisting from the northwest. "The Dro." And then the river flowing west to east. "The Sturm." A flick of the wrist indicated the eastern side of the city, "They join together and flow into the Ulo." An expansive unfolding of her arms. "And between them? Lake Hylia and the Isle o' Kings. Home to the Imperial Palace o' Hyrule."

Malora gave me a sly look. "Ya' may just see it in person soon."

Her tour guide's hand shot up again and began to enumerate the city's many districts, starting with the rapidly approaching South End. About the shores of Lake Hylia spread opulent Midtown; nestled in the crux of the Sturm and Dro rivers was Sump Deep; to the west sat the imaginatively labeled West Side.

Before Malora could finish her inventory, she was cut off by the sound of rapidly approaching hoof beats.

Tash had been right: We _did _know the legionary escort when we saw them. A group of men in full armor trotted up the highway toward us with an air of intense purpose. Five in all. The rearmost of their number bore a purple and gold standard that flapped from atop a pole bolted directly into the man's armor. A war flag depicting the device of the royal family. Two carried lances so large they could have been used to kill elephants. Each rode atop a muscular, shaggy-shanked charger.

"Royal knights!" Ingo marveled. "Looks like someone's getting' a wee bit famous!"

Beside me, both Malora and Tash all but bounced in the bucket seat from sudden blasts of excitement.

The lead rider pulled beside the wagon, mount snorting and blowing, and turned his attention on us. Each of the four other knights reined in their horses and gazed over us with dispassionate but watchful eyes.

"Lord Tashiel Lon?" the lead knight asked, voice full of gravel.

Tash grinned and said, "Aye, that's me, 'tis."

The apparent leader of this welcoming committee glanced over his shoulder to his backup. One of these – the man bearing the royal banner – nodded gravely.

When the closest knight turned back, his eyes roved over the wagon and locked solidly onto me. I felt goose bumps pop up across my arms and legs.

He was an imposing man – both tall and broad, so far as I could tell through his heavy plate armor. A boxy face founded on a bedrock chin. Though he couldn't be older than his mid-thirties, his brown hair was streaked gray at the temples. A spray of gunmetal ran through his pronounced widow's peak. He had a flat nose that had clearly been broken more than once. Gray eyes with all the watchful displeasure of an osprey. A fish-belly-white scar ran like a lightning bolt from his forehead, over his left eye, and struck into a pink exclamation point on his chin.

The knight's armor shone silver as incarnate destiny. Enameled white scrollwork covered its breadth and flared into the thunderbird device of House Harkinian on its chest plate. A thick gorget surrounded his neck with albescent designs. Strapped to his back was a bastard sword so immense that it could have sprung from a Japanese RPG.

"Is it you, then?" the burly knight rumbled.

No one spoke. I knew full well what he meant and who he meant to answer. All the same, I didn't break past the lump in my throat until Malora applied pressure to my palm.

"Um. I. D-do you mean _me_?" I stammered.

Not exactly a sterling first impression, numbnuts.

The rider's scar twitched like an inchworm – perhaps with the effort of suppressing a roll of the eyes. He was unsuccessful at keeping down an exasperated exhalation. When he spoke, it was in a quick rasp.

"Sir, we have received reports that a man claiming to be the Hero of the Triforce travels with the retinue of House Lon. Is this true? Are you, in fact, that man?"

There it was: That fucking phrase. "Claiming to be." Jesus. You'd think that I'd gone up the highway with a neon sign blinking, _The HERO of the TRIFORCE! Only ten Rupees an audience! One night only!_

Finding my larynx paralyzed, I settled for a weak nod. Without any prompting, I pulled off my cap and brushed unruly clumps of hair from my ears. The rider's eyes pulled open and his lips parted as if he had been about to speak an oath. Similar reactions passed through the knights at his back.

At last, the head rider blinked, clearly composed himself, and inclined his head. "As you are probably already aware, my companions and I are legionary knights serving at the pleasure of King Daphnes Harkinian. I am Sir Walther Kael. Welcome to Hylium."

"Sir Kael, eh?" Ingo grunted. One of his eyebrows rose like an undulating black caterpillar. "You're with the First, ain't you, sir?"

The knight examined Ingo with obvious, suspicious discomfort. "Aye, I am. I am Banner-Commander of the cavalry division of the First Legion." He paused, glanced back at me as if to confirm that I hadn't winked out of existence, and then said, "My orders are to see you safely into the city. His majesty wishes you a fine stay in Hylium and that you enter his capital unmolested."

Tash Lon grinned guilelessly and slapped his thigh. "An' a finer escort we couldn't possibly ask for! How far will ya' ride with us, Sir Kael?"

The knight's gaze still hovered over me. "Will, ah – the –"

"Linus," I said, failing to conceal an edge of irritation.

"Ah. Will _Linus _be staying at your residence, Lord Lon?"

A good-natured shrug. "Aye, aye. For the time bein', I suppose he will! S'only proper of us to house the Link until . . . well, whatever it is that comes next for him!"

"Then we shall ride with you to your home, my Lord." Sir Kael nodded decisively. "We shall keep a respectable distance, as befits the service. If you require any assistance durin' the journey, please tell us."

Ingo made a fist and thrust it into the air. "Lead on, sir!" he shouted.

Sir Walther Kael's facial blemishes contorted. He looked at Ingo with a species of bemused disbelief. The knight shook his head as if he was indulging a pack of mental patients, gently nudged his charger in the ribs, and set to organizing our escort. The knights urged their mounts and clopped into tight formation about the wagon. Two before; three behind. Oddly, Sir Kael himself held the rearmost position. With all in readiness, the nine of us continued north into the belly of Hylium.


	27. 27

**27**

This was a strange place that I now entered. A terrible, frightening, alien place. An unutterably beautiful, wonderful, astonishing place. A city where every building seemed to grow spires, narrow steeples, and elaborate, evocative weathervanes.

Our quasi-official caravan entered the South End, where the market avenues boiled with people and color. The Lords' Highway vanished beneath a smooth plane of time-worn cobblestones. Buildings rose about us like marble and iron hands grasping at the sun. Paths through the city spread open in odd welcome.

This was a commercial district to end commercial districts. Shops and markets lined both sides of the street. Hawkers yelled over each other in a layered morass of come-ons and slogans.

There were caverns of cloth; molehills of spices; labyrinths of armor; menageries of toys and games. Bottles and bottles and bottles of inconceivable potions glittered in display cases. Stalls offered heaps of fruit, grains, tubers, and legumes. Shadow-laden doorways promised deals on half-seen treasures. Gnarled women bent beneath striped awnings and beckoned like succubi.

Restaurants, bodegas, and taverns belched aromatic steam onto the sun-baked street. Odors of fried bread, foul stew, grilling beef, rotten eggs, hot garlic, salty broth, and seared fish made my stomach grow eager and greasy by turns.

Whole packs of whippet-like dogs lazed at the ends of tethers. A pair of Doberman-sized cats stalked back and forth behind their robed owner. Gohma chattered and blinked and fidgeted in bamboo cages. Blind keese hung upside down in wire aeries and mewled through saber fangs. A male cuccoo bared its saurian teeth, spread a leathery crest like an orange crescent moon, and strutted out to survey its fiefdom.

Malora's bathhouse estimate of a million people had probably been conservative. If anything, it was probably half again as much . . . if not double. Whatever the actual figure, the sheer _density _of the place astounded me. Even downtown Los Angeles didn't seem to contain this level of sheer hustle and bustle. An inevitable second wave of numbing culture shock began to set in – one that made Oloro Town look like a trip to Kalamazoo.

So many faces; so many voices; so much of it all completely new. Accents unknown to me screeched about rugs and pipes and pearls. Men in serapes and wide straw hats hauled baskets weighed down with produce. Women in prim dresses and head-wraps scowled at decanters full of mysterious elixirs. Gorons chuffed and laughed and haggled their way through the stalls. Fairies zipped back and forth over our heads with mocking laughter in their wake.

Malora had to point out a group of Shiekah sashaying past the shops. Three women of wildly different ages and body types, their ethnicity evident only in the sharp length of their ears and the jeweled glint of their eyes. All wore ochre body wraps that looked like elaborately tied saris. Their faces were painted with designs full of mysterious and somewhat dread-laden meaning.

I caught my first glimpse of zora among the crowds. It was, admittedly, quite a poor glimpse. Just a quick view of a blue-gray, glistening face beneath the cowl of a heavy cloak. The garment gleamed wetly in the sun, sloshing and splorching audibly as the zora hurried through the heart of the market. Unknowable graphite eyes flashed. Flared nostrils sat in a scrunched nose. Full, bruise-colored lips pressed together as if in pain or determination.

Above the bazaars, women in shawls and habits leaned from windows to set laundry out to dry. Laughter and shouted gossip fell from great heights.

Once we plunged fully into this joyous chaos, progress was slow-going. We turned down side streets but twice – once without a word exchanged between riders and the wagon-borne; once at Walther Kael's insistence. The latter detour came as I saw the boulevard ahead packed wall to wall with Civil Militia, their head-height shields holding back a sizable crowd. The gathered people jumped and jostled as they tried to see into the junction beyond. I could just make out some kind of procession moving behind the human barrier. Dark blue and iron-gray pennants bobbed up and down from atop lance points.

After urging us to take a side route around the blocked street, the Banner-Commander urged his horse into a collected trot beside the wagon. His rough skin ran with sweat. He managed a kind of smile and said, "That there was Lord Lanayru's entourage, if I'm not mistaken. He is not the first noble representative to enter the capital in recent days." The smile vanished as if it had never existed in the first place. His eyes darted to me. "Nor will he be the last, as I hear."

"Oh?" Tash Lon said.

Walther Kael shook his head gravely. He growled, "Aye. In fact, I believe that much of the Council o' Lords is already gathered within the city limits."

Without any further explanation, Kael sped forward and matched an easy pace with Ingo. The knight turned his attention to the lanky ranch hand and grew a rueful expression.

Clearing his throat, Sir Kael said, "You gave me a legionary salute. Pray tell, sir – you aren't a deserter, are you?"

"Errr," Ingo sputtered. "No, sir!"

"I jest. You must have served at the King's pleasure in the past, then."

"Aye. Aye." The thin man wiped his brow and continued, "Once upon a time, Ingo were Sergeant-at-Arms Ingo Igby, o' the Fifth Legion, sir. 33rd Foot – pikes, then skirmishers. Fought in the mob rebellion, Ingo did. But that were a lifetime ago, sir."

Walther Kael laughed genially and waved a hand. "No need for that, Mister Igby. It sounds as if you served the Legions when I was just a stable boy. If anything, I should by rights be saluting _you_."

Ingo made a sputtery, embarrassed sound.

After this brief, jocular interrogation, Kael went back to being a cipher – albeit one with the ghost of a grin on his lips. He said nothing more to us until we arrived at our destination.

We ambled through a residential neighborhood of neither high nor low class. Stout buildings were coated colorfully with lines of prayer flags. A calmer place, this. Rooftop gardens pressed trees and rough vineyards into the sky.

We came into Midtown, where the avenues narrowed and the buildings loomed older, darker, and more prestigious. A damp sensation of wealth exuded from the old stones. Here were also shops and parlors, but they were tucked away behind leaded glass and elegant signs. No tower blocks rose from these streets. Peak-roofed homes didn't so much stand as brood in contemplation.

Not far to go now, Tash assured me. The Lons kept a second home in Hylium's central district in order to conduct business both as a noble house and a ranching clan. Looking up at the grim visages of the houses scattered about this area, I wondered what kind of ultra-Gothic monstrosity I would be sleeping in that night.

Farther into Midtown, our caravan found itself once more beset by crowds. Afternoon comings and goings of all sorts. The wagon turned down one street, then another. I soon found myself completely without bearings. It was a glad thing that I didn't have to navigate this idiot savant city on my own.

A gaggle of giggling teenage girls crossed the street in front of us. They all wore identical gray robes and black dresses beneath. Almost every one wore their hair shoulder length, but each pate stood out on its own in a flare of wild color. Heads of marigold yellow, neon green, lustrous silver, road-cone orange, and midnight blue bobbed among the group.

While this might have passed for a slightly playful day on any Los Angeles street, I was taken aback by an even more prominent feature of this small mob: Their rainbow-colored skins. The girls bore bodies that shone puce, navy, umber, and chartreuse. Colors seemingly as random and appalling as possible.

One unfortunate case showed off olive-colored skin beneath a mop of fire engine curls. It gave her the look of a cartoon character whose name I couldn't quite remember.

I stared at them all like a slack-jawed idiot. As one, rather.

When the girls had moved down an intervening street, Malora made an irritated sound and said, "Ungh. I had hoped that would be out of fashion by now."

"Buuh?" I managed.

She made a dismissive gesture toward the receding backs of the robed girls. "Dye potions! Skin; hair; even nails now, I hear. They were popular the last time I was in the capital. I'd have thought them gone by now."

"You disapprove?" I asked.

"Nay," Malora said. "The potions have their uses. I tried it once, for a masquerade. It works quite well. My hair turned purple as a petunia!" She leaned close, cupped a hand to my ear, and whispered, "And so did my pee for a week after it wore off." She theatrically raised her voice and said, "But wearin' those colors all the time? Right silly, it is. And so pretentious! I, for one, hope it goes out o' style soon."

Tash piped up, "Ah, Malon dear – these things come and go. Why, I remember when those potions first came to market, back before you were born! The first time I took audience at the palace, the ol' Queen – Nayru rest her – had taken a potion that turned her hair green as a melon. I hear it didn't turn back goin' on three years!"

For a moment, I thought I saw black women – or their Gerudo equivalents – amidst the throng. Then I realized that these were merely more of the fashionable, going about their business with skins dyed the colors of creamed coffee and crude oil. It was honestly unsettling to see such a solidly Caucasian people.

With the way so much less crowded than the South Side, I was surprised that no one figured out who we were. After all, some of the towns and villages we had passed through on our way north had waited hours for the Lons' wagon to arrive.

All that said, it became obvious that some _did _get it. They hurried after the wagon with rising expressions of astonishment. The mounted knights warded them off before they could get too close and they all seemed to stumble in place, joy melting into disappointment.

I felt like I should stand and wave and acknowledge their sudden realizations. _Yes_! I should have yelled. _It is I_!

God, but I was a blithering wreck by then. Though I had the desire to play my part, I didn't have the physical – or really, even the mental – capacity to achieve it. Even rising in the wagon's bucket seat felt like a task for burlier men than I. The simple path we had carved through the city had pounded me into emotional mush. I felt a little like I was coming down from a hit of Ecstasy – those listless hours long after the moment pill touches tongue.

My nerves were jelly. My senses were shot.

I don't really know how long it took the wagon and its escorts to travel from the suburban edge of Hylium to the front gate of the Lon home, mere miles from the shore of Lake Hylia. It felt like a goddamn odyssey to me – hours and hours of cultural and sensory overload. However, once I oozed off the wagon and onto the cinnabar-colored cobblestones, I couldn't help but note that the sun told early afternoon at the latest. Malora, Tash, and Ingo didn't seem the least bit perturbed by how long it had taken us. The knights of the First Legion appeared bored and irritable with the milk run that they had just completed.

Sir Walther Kael, now looking decidedly uncomfortable under all that elaborate armor, came to halt next to Tash. "Lord Lon," he breathed, "is this your residence?"

"Oh – aye!"

"With your permission," Sir Kael heaved, "I would like to end our escort and return to legionary headquarters. I have to report to High General Eldridge on both this assignment and . . ."

Oh, you fucker. Stop looking at me like that!

". . . other matters."

Tash slipped off the bucket seat and waved a hand in a single motion. "You've done more than enough today, Sir Kael. Farore knows that we didn't even really need ya'!"

"Aye," the knight said with a certain bitterness.

Now, he turned that sterile, raptor's gaze on me once more. Sir Kael pronounced, "It was a . . . _pleasure _to guide you into our city, outerlander. I am certain that we will meet again – sooner rather than later. You shall receive further communications. All the luck of Farore to you in the coming days."

It wasn't difficult to pick out what he _wasn't _saying. Even in the little communication he had had with me, not once had Walther Kael called me "hero." I knew that this shouldn't get under my skin. In fact, I should have been steeling myself for much more of the same.

Nonetheless, I felt my hackles raise as the tall cavalryman turned and spurred his horse into a canter. His fellow knights followed after him, each and every one of them casting glances back at me as if I might grow twenty feet tall, sprout fangs, and take off in pursuit. They clopped down the little residential street and exited stage left about the closest corner.

Dicks.

"Right-o, then!" Tash laughed, clapping his palms in delight. "What fine fellows they were, eh?"

Ingo rubbed at his nose absently and said, "Heard a bit about Sir Kael, Ingo has. An impressive soldier, they say. It's a shame he's stuck here in Hylium with the First."

"Oh, indeed. Shame. Now, Ingo . . ."

The gaunt man shrugged and hauled himself up into the bucket seat. "Ingo knows what's what, he does. He'll go make the usual arrangements."

"Splendid!" Tash crooned. He hesitated and then said, "Do you mind rousin' Della and Suri, while you're at it?"

Ingo took hold of the reins and sighed, "Aye, boss." He gave me a sweep of his hard eyes. I was surprised to see a sarcastic twinkle in those pit-like irises. "Wouldn't want ya' to get your hands too full, boss."

"Ah come off it then!" Tash chuckled as Ingo snapped the reins and directed the oxen forward. One of the beasts grumbled, sneezed, and defecated loudly onto the cobbles. The wagon disappeared by the same route the knights had taken.

Malora wrinkled her nose and sighed, "I guess the sweepers'll be earnin' their Rupees today." A shrug; a resigned smile. "C'mon. Let's get situated."

Ingo had left us standing at the foot of an adobe wall, in which there was set a low iron gate. Behind these barriers I could pick out the edges of a sage-green yard. Beneath the gauzy shadows thrown by trees and neighboring buildings sat a modest house. Tash produced a ring of blocky keys and undid the padlock hanging off the gate.

The Lons' Hylium residence turned out to be a boxy villa of white brick and red ceramic tiles. A single storey, though expansive. Neither as old nor as stately as the homes that surrounded it, but certainly charming and spacious. The grounds spread out from it covered in fine grass and crossed by a slate walkway. About the yard, globular jade trees soaked in the sun. Proudly alien songbirds and metallic insects danced through their fat, succulent leaves.

Another padlock glowered on the ornate front door of the house. "Had some squatters decide to make camp here once, about three years ago," Tash muttered as he rifled through his keys. "Now we have Suri drop by every couple o' days to make sure the place ain't filled with thieves or refugees or what have you." He pushed open the front door with a flourish.

"It ain't no manse, but it does the job right proper!" the rancher beamed.

The interior of the villa was shady, cool, and faintly musty from disuse. Its walls were plastered in simple but aesthetically pleasing mosaics. Abstract patterns of blues, grays, and eggshell whites.

An airy, deceptively open sitting room expanded beyond an initial foyer. Four square-edged pillars, covered in the same elegant tilework as the walls, flanked a sunken floor in the center of the chamber. In this low space were well-used-looking chairs and couches, all of which surrounded a low table. A conversation pit, I realized, and it took a good deal of effort not to laugh.

"Swanky!" I whistled.

Three bedrooms, a generous kitchen, a narrow washroom, and a study redolent of floating dust budded off the central area. Utilitarian beds waited in each empty side chamber. A back door opened onto a garden path, which wound back to a quaint adobe outhouse.

Despite my misgivings, it was decided that I would take one of the bedrooms and Ingo would sleep in the great room for the duration of our stay. I feared the absent man's reaction, but the Lons' cheerful insistence won out.

As per instructions, I stowed all my loose belongings in the guest bedroom. I mulled the dirty clothes shoved to one side of my duffle and the fresh, local garments draped over my body. Only the bag and the bits of foreign clothing remained as evidence that Los Angeles was anything more than a hallucination.

Something about that realization made me frown and look sadly up through the bedroom window. Dust motes gyrated through the afternoon light. Beyond the distorting, bumpy glass, the lawns and trees looked like an impressionist painting. I sighed, retied my increasingly unruly hair, and girded myself for whatever came next.

"Why don't we take in a bit o' the local chow while Ingo's at market?" Tash suggested as I reemerged.

Both Malora and I found ourselves famished, so we all but jumped at the idea. The three of us walked out into the maze of Midtown and took an afternoon meal at a café, which spilled out of a second story and onto a series of terraced verandas.

Grinning like a drunken jester, the establishment's proprietor carried out a deceptively simple meal: a basket of doughy fry bread and a platter heaped with honest-to-God gohma meat. We speared hunks of the pinkish-white flesh and folded it into pieces of the bread. Ingo had been right – the rich, surprisingly heavy gohma went excellently with the pot of pepper sauce set next to the dishes.

I ate slowly, drank two tankards worth of an adequate local pilsner, and joked idly with Tash about the professed meagerness of his holdings. From time to time, I glanced at Malora and experienced an almost felonious thrill as she held my eyes. All told, I was feeling quite smoothly about the day by the time Tash settled our bill.

When the three of us returned from this long and satisfying lunch, we found the Lon villa abuzz with activity. Two chirpy housekeepers – the Suri and Della mentioned by Tash – skipped from chamber to chamber. Both were heavyset women in their middle years, though Della was blonde and Suri wore her salt-and-pepper hair in a high, primped bun. They dropped their dusting and water-hauling to happily greet Tash as we entered, then fawned over me for some minutes.

Ingo lazed on one of the couches in the main room. A dripping red plum in one hand; a cheap, thin, pulpy book in the other. His afternoon's business – offloading the wagon's contents to a buyer, assuring payment to the correct banks, and bringing the oxen to livery – had apparently taken much less time than anticipated. Now, the gruff man looked as relaxed as I'd ever seen him.

Tash interrogated his friend about the market trip while Malora chatted with the housekeepers. Suri and Della went back to their chores even as they talked and giggled. I leaned on a pillar and smiled sleepily.

"Ahem!" A hale, resonant voice echoed about the tiled walls. "I hope that I am not interrupting too rudely, but sometimes the King's business knows not the usual pleasantries!"

A crash of quiet. Footfalls slowed and then stopped. All heads turned to the foyer and the front door that stood open there.

Framed against the soft green and amber of the afternoon, a man like a human exclamation point strolled into the villa. A foppish fellow in a blue cape, edged with frilly gold. He stood lean and angular and ugly. A blonde mustache flopped resignedly above his thin lips.

The man doffed a blue skullcap and bowed stiffly. "I apologize for the intrusion, Lord Lon. I assure you that it is on a matter of utmost national importance." His words were slick and dark as olive oil.

Tash Lon shot up out of his chair as if his ass had been lit on fire. "Sir Perun!" he exclaimed. "It's an honor, sir! Quite an honor!"

This new figure grinned joylessly and loped into the great room. "Miss Lon. Mister Igby," he said, bowing slightly less with each name. "It is a pleasure to see you all, I assure you."

With this, the visitor unceremoniously turned to me and declared, "And you must be Linus Olsen. The man that some say is the Hero of the Triforce!"

I managed to raise a hesitant hand. "Hey. Sup."

Tash ambled forward and spread hands between the man and myself. "Eh, Linus – this here is Sir Erik Perun. I got to say it's a bit o' a shock to see him here, because he's –"

"I am High Herald and chief messenger of the royal family of Hyrule, Mister Olsen," Sir Perun cut in. "I command, coordinate, and call forth the edicts of the King. His august words are my own. What our sovereign decrees, I assure is disseminated to his subjects." His smile seemed inordinately pleased. "Lord Tashiel's surprise is quite warranted. These days, I rarely venture beyond my aerie's walls. And I never bear messages myself. I have a small army of men to do so for me. I assure you that today is an auspicious day indeed – for I bear word directly from the King's lips."

Everyone in the room let that sink in a bit. Sir Perun seemed to relish watching the weight of it settling on our shoulders.

Finally, Tash murmured, "What would his majesty have of me, Sir Perun?"

That ever-so-pleased, slightly mocking grin grew in scope. "Alas, your role in the grand events afoot is almost at an end, Lord Lon. The request I bear does require your assistance, but it primarily concerns _you_, Linus Olsen." The royal messenger's hazel eyes turned upon me. "You have been summoned!" he said regally.

"Summoned?" I croaked.

"To the Imperial Palace of his majesty King Daphnes Harkinian, of course! The King has called upon you to take audience with both he and his Council of Lords. He has decreed that your claim to the title of Hero be examined, tested, and – if the goddesses be kind – verified."

Where had my organs gone? I could have sworn they were still in me a moment ago.

"You are to attend this general assembly of the Court and Council tomorrow at ten strokes of the morning bell. Lord Lon: You are expected to present Mister Olsen to the King and his Council, as we understand that you were the man responsible for bringing him to light. You need not worry about transport – a carriage of the palace guard, as well as a legionary escort, will arrive here one hour beforehand."

Looking a bit dazed, Tash coughed, "When ya' say 'the Council,' who all do ya' mean? Which Lords'll be attendin'?"

"All that are able! The King has gathered the Council and all of his advisors for this event. The presence of every head of a noble House in Hyrule has been requested."

Tash's face went stony. "Why was I not informed before this?" he asked, more than a little brusquely.

Perun shrugged and screwed up his face in a contrite expression of innocence. He said, "Alas, recent days have been more than slightly chaotic. The more, ah, _regular_ attendants of the Council were informed only two days ago. Though I am told that many have already arrived, there are quite a few making haste to the capital even as we speak. I am afraid that some – Lord Protector Ralis, for instance – will not arrive in time to attend the audience."

"I would have liked a bit more notice!" Tash griped. Malora and Ingo winced.

Sir Perun swept over the distance to Tash and placed a weathered hand on the rancher's shoulder. "I do apologize, my Lord," Perun minced. "It was an unfortunate result of my office being swamped with incoming and outgoing communiqués. Why, we didn't even know where you were on the Lords' Highway these last two days! Know that the King desires your company and your council in these matters. His majesty only wishes to finally resolve – once and for all – whether you have discovered the Link that he has so desperately sought for so long."

Still prickly – though seemingly calmed – Tash muttered, "Aye. Aye. I serve at his majesty's pleasure, I do. And we will be waitin' for that carriage as it rolls to our gate." He shot me a grim look tinged with an undeniable edge of growing excitement. "Ain't we, Linus?"

"Looks like it," I breathed.

"Excellent!" clucked Sir Perun. "Now, may I suggest that you prepare for your day tomorrow? It will inevitably be quite long and quite remarkable. Have you ever presented yourself before royalty, sir?"

What the fuck do you think? I mulled miserably. "Um. No," was all I managed.

The messenger folded his hands behind his back and sniffed. "I am certain that Lord Tashiel will properly school you in the required dress and behavior before you arrive at the palace."

His eyes roved over me as if taking in a city post-hurricane. Sir Perun smiled thinly and said, "I would say that you still have quite a bit of work to do."


	28. 28

**28**

On the morning of Dreamday, 15th Lanaius, I stepped through the gate of House Lon's private Hylium home and into the hour of my destiny.

The sky was a fine, cloud-striped blue – the sort of color that might adorn expensive china. It was already warm, promising a hot and muggy day to come. The breeze that blew off Lake Hylia and swirled through the streets of Midtown smelled of algae and wet limestone.

Beyond the edge of the Lon property waited a pearly, rotund carriage – just as Erik Perun had promised. Silver oak leaves sprouted from the abstract scrollwork decorating its white walls. Draft horses like those used by divine charioteers stood patiently, flicking their tails and ears at curious insects. Veinal pennants ran from the vehicle's roof.

Lord Tashiel Lon stood at my elbow, bedecked in all his noble finery. Shaven; mustache groomed; thick body poured into a suit of creamy silk and charcoal-colored wool. A blue and white sash wrapped from his shoulder to his waist, giving him the unfortunate appearance of a judge at a county fair.

This was not to say that I was, at that moment, an exalted pinnacle of fashion. The outfit that I wore was just short of fucking ridiculous. But I'll get to that.

As I watched Tash grab the gate and swing it inward, my scrotum tightened and my spine grew a few degrees colder. I gulped, sniffed, and wondered if there might still be a way to get out of this.

Was this really happening? Has it really come to this? Lord, but it had gone by so quickly – so numbly – so recklessly.

When I had woken, addled with slow-motion terror, it was before dawn. Fog had risen from the rivers and licked at the window panes. I stared out into a Hylium remade into a kind of byzantine purgatory. My toes curled and uncurled on the cool tile floor. Spirals of mist played through the jade trees as the sun rose.

My sleep had been dreamless, but I still felt slow-gnawing fear. That incessant, bony, itching sensation stayed with me as the morning passed into light and movement. As the sun turned the eastern fringe of the city to dappled gold, there came knocks on my door and calls to action.

At breakfast, Tash uncorked a bulbous jug of wine and insisted that I drink a cup for my nerves. While I can't speak to how it soothed my overclocked body, the wine _did_ help cover up the lingering taste of Malora's pussy. Man, it had been an interesting night.

In fact, the remainder of the previous day had been so "interesting" that it had rocketed by in a frightening blur. I considered it like one considers a weird, foreign piece of sculpture. As I sipped wine from a mug and took another bite of rich, fruit-laden porridge, I turned the day before over and over without ever really making sense of it.

Mere moments after the High Herald had marched from the Lon home, Tash had launched forth like a madman and commanded Ingo to run out to fetch "the usual clothman."

The rancher turned to me and declared, "This's no insult to you or your people, Linus . . . but here in Hyrule those just ain't clothes you can wear to meet the King."

Thus, it was no surprise when Ingo returned with a man meant to make me a new wardrobe.

The tailor was a bushy-browed little fat man who complained openly of all that ailed him. Baldness, hemorrhoids, eczema, gout. He jabbered with unblushing enthusiasm as he measured my limbs. Everyone grew impatient with anticipating whatever new personal horror he would reveal.

"You're a bit bony, son," the tailor said as he ran a leather tape over what passed for my bicep. "Do they not feed ya' back where you come from?"

He chuckled, rolled up his measuring strip, and clucked, "Well, I must confess that I cannot make an audience-worthy suit in one night. However!" He all but contorted with joy. "I do have a little something back my shop that the Lord Mayor's son requested from me. He's a little taller than you, but I'll take it in a bit. I'll return with it in no more than two hours."

While we waited for the tailor to hurry back, I received a cram-school version of courtly etiquette.

In short: Bow to nobility. Always use honorifics with Lords (except for Tash, who assured me that I would be beaten blue if I called him "Lord Tashiel"). Never speak unless spoken to.

When taking audience with the King, it was even trickier. Don't move unless called upon. When called upon, kneel. Don't stop kneeling unless released by the King. Don't address the King as anything but "your majesty." Don't move suddenly around the King unless you want a spear in the eye. Never speak unless spoken to.

Upon the tailor's return, I was handed a bundle of clothes and asked to change. I emerged from my room in puffy black pantaloons, a loose white silk shirt, and a cloth-of-gold vest. The tops of mahogany-colored leather boots climbed halfway up to my knees. A red sash snaked about my waist.

"For your scabbard belt!" the tailor explained, beaming.

I looked at myself in a glass mirror hung between the great room and kitchen.

"I look like a goddamn pirate," I grumbled.

"I think it makes you look dashin'," Malora opined from a couch in the conversation pit.

With gelid reluctance, I admitted that the clothes were at least very finely made. A purchase, it was.

Tash footed the bill despite my lame protests. It was a good damn thing he did so, because the whole gaudy ensemble came to four-hundred Rupees. When the fat man named his price, I gasped aloud. Tash simply nodded as if acknowledging a weather forecast.

Then the night. A dinner filled with the turbo-excited words of Tash and Malora as they speculated on whom exactly would be at the audience. Other such imponderables. What did the King want to do with Linus? Would the Court and Council allow the Hero to achieve his destiny? Suppose Linus gets sent up to fight in the borderlands? And so on, continuing such questions until everyone retired to bed.

Hell, even after that: while Malora was sitting on my face.

"It's so . . . excitin'!" she gasped as she gently rocked her hips back and forth, back and forth.

After breakfast, I was shooed out of the kitchen and told to get ready. A copper tub wreathed with steam awaited me in the washroom. On a stool next to the tub sat a pot of shaving foam and a gleaming straight razor. It was a miracle I didn't kill myself with that thing.

I donned my new clothes with the unfortunate conviction that I was putting on a Halloween costume. Malora patiently tied back my wet hair with a green ribbon. She finished the knot with a squeak and scooted about to take me in in full.

"You look marvelous!" Malora grinned. Her eyes darted about, flashing sapphire in the soft light. Malora slipped forward and kissed my lightly on the lips. At that moment, I wanted more than anything to take her in my arms, press her close, and answer in kind.

However, she danced back as quickly as she came. Malora Lon pressed her palms behind her back and said, "You look like a hero."

I smiled gently.

Malora whispered, "Don't be afraid, Linus. Don't worry. _You are the Hero o' legend._ They'll see that plain as day. The King may seem like a grim fellow, but he's actually quite kind and agreeable. Why, he specifically looked in on me at a Solstice ball I went to a few years back! Shook my arm and congratulated me on my birthday, of all the things!

"And the Princess, well – she may seem a bit snotty an' cold, but . . ." Malora shook her head. "Well, never mind. Point is, the royal lot are actually good folk. An' you don't need to worry about 'em. I know you'll show 'em exactly who you are."

Before I could ask any questions or initiate any embraces, Tash and Ingo came bumbling out into the great room. Tash cinched his sash about his bulk.

Malora raised her hand, smiled shyly, and murmured, "Good luck, _hero_."

I still think about that moment from time to time. When I do, it's with a beautiful melancholy.

Ingo saw Tash and me to the door. He took my arm and growled, "Goddesses help ya' in that den o' gohmas."

And that's where we came in. Tash and I mounting the gunwale of the carriage as the flinty-eyed driver swung open the door. Tash, already starting to sweat. Me, turning over one last bit of maddening information. What had Malora said? "The Princess?"

_The Princess_.

Shit. Oh shit.

I knew who that was. Of course I did. How could I not?

This was happening. This was _happening_. How the hell had this come to pass?

We piled into the plush interior of the carriage. Through windows tinted ever so slightly, I watched an escort of mounted knights arrive. Sir Walther Kael appeared, resplendent in his silver-white plate armor. Apparently, he was making it his business to trot his horse straight past my window. His smoke-gray eyes raked over me with unconcealed suspicion. He urged his mount forward and called for our little procession to set out.

My heart stomped against my ribs. My fingers dug into velvet upholstery the color of raw liver.

We heard a muffled shout and a sharp snap. Draft horses neighed. Huge hooves slapped cobbles. The carriage lurched forward.

We went forth into Midtown.

I had been under the impression that my presence in Hylium – not to mention the palace audience – was a secret. This was clearly not the case. Hordes of people lined the curbs, watching intently for the arrival of the royal carriage. They hung from windows, bunched up against foundations, and crowded rooftops. Thousands of outturned faces. Flat-featured, ebon-eyed gorons. Somber flashes of wet gray flesh, heralding zora in the crowds. Shiekah eyes flashed sparks of metal and magic. The ghostly match-heads of fairies bobbed and shouted.

About the thumping and rolling carriage, dozens of legionary knights spread in formation. Banners held high and brilliant. Every one of them clad in elaborate, multilayered armor. Most hid their faces behind evocatively-forged visors and full helmets. They moved to hold back a crowd that did not actually need to be held back.

While my reception in Oloro Town had the feel of the night of a Super Bowl win), the march through the streets of Hylium was as austere as a papal visit. Yes, some of the crowd hooted and jumped and jigged at the carriage's coming. However, most all watched either in silence or between contemplative whispers.

It occurred to me that the final night in Oloro Town had been the kind of spontaneous unraveling of tension. A moment when hope and victory blended together in a potent brew. Here in Hylium, the people had had a few days to consider and digest the news of the Hero's coming. There was an air of expectation, but not jubilation, about the town. They could save the partying for later. As of now, they had been burned too many times to really get their hopes up over this potential savior.

Tash grinned out at the onlookers as they rolled past. "Yer a famous man now, Linus," he laughed.

The day of the audience had either been a fine coincidence or – as I later suspected – chosen intentionally. Dreamday, as it turned out, was the fifth day of the Hylian week and its first day of rest. A day for markets, festivals, and personal business. With no jobs to attend, the turnout for a glimpse at the royal carriage and its Heroic cargo was amplified tenfold.

There came a shrieking voice. At first, completely incomprehensible. A disheveled man in the torn duster burst through the front of the crowd.

"DOWN WITH KING HARKINIAN!" he howled.

I blinked and shuddered. The man was a gibbering husk. His clothes hung off him like tent fabric. In his hand was a stack of uneven sheets of dirty parchment.

"DOWN WITH THE TYRANT HARKINIAN! DOWN WITH KINGS! NO KINGS BUT OURSELVES! NO GODS BUT THOSE WE CHOOSE!"

He swept a page from his bundle and waved it above the heads of the crowd. On it were poorly printed words in Hylian. At their center was a splotchy symbol that I couldn't quite make out – something that looked like an eyeball surrounded by chained designs.

The wagon began to leave the rabble-rouser behind. I heard him scream, "EMBRACE THE PROTECTORATE AND EMBRACE FREEDOM!" Three Civil Militiamen materialized through the throng. Their tall shields surrounded the crier. Then the carriage pulled far enough ahead that I could see no more.

A determined scratching sound pulled my attention back to Tash. He ran fingernails over his half-bald pate. He muttered, "O' course, not everyone's grateful to the King. Only a few bad ones like that. Enough people know what Ganon's really like."

Layers of citizenry watched our journey until Midtown dropped away and Lake Hylia shimmered fully into view. The sun played over the lake's surface like quicksilver. Bits of cool mist still clung to the water. To the northeast rose the shadowed spike of the Imperial Palace.

We passed through the strip of carefully maintained parkland that ringed the lakeshore. Legionary soldiers waited and watched from amid the trees and hedgerows. Unarmored cavalry pensively rode the district's perimeter.

The carriage clattered up and over the Black Bridge – a structure named so because it was so. It was a spiny stretch of dark basalt, reaching over the waters of Lake Hylia to grasp the Isle of Kings.

It became obvious that I had had no idea of the scale of the building residing on that island. Nor the island itself, really. The damned thing had to have a diameter of two miles – and that was a conservative estimate. It actually rose above the level of the lake surface considerably, climbing in green hillocks to the gates of the palace. Massive stone levies surrounded the base of the island.

The Imperial Palace grew from the bedrock of the Isle of Kings like godlike, petrified plant from another dimension. It was a veritable jungle of steeples, towers, curtain walls, and arches like roping ivy. Carvings and seemingly random stone claws jutted from its heights.

From what I could tell, a sheer black outer wall enclosed the whole of the palace. Its ramparts were fin-like curves that shone like razors. At regular intervals, very tall watchtowers extended from this wall and actually curved inward, giving the outer structure the look of a giant anemone.

The palace was evidently made up of a number of buildings, connected either by covered walkways or discreet passages. I couldn't see all the different halls and annexes from the Black Bridge, but it was obvious that there was a single central keep. This enormous building rose immediately beyond the palace gatehouse, sprouting three monstrous towers and a city-in-miniature of spires. Amid these architectural growths sprung a single central steeple so intricate and absolute that it took the breath away.

A glance to the side of the carriage revealed that most of the knightly escort had fallen back. Only a handful now guided us. Walther Kael still glowered at their forefront.

The gates of the Imperial Palace were open. They were dark-wooded, cyclopean slabs with more slots for bolts and locks than I thought possible. Archers armed with longbows as tall as they were observed us with impenetrable eyes. We passed under the outer wall and I had the distinct sensation that I was entering a new world. A passage perhaps even stranger and more dangerous than the one from Los Angeles to Eldin.

Now we came into a luxuriant courtyard, cobbled with white stone and surrounded by lawns so green they could have been made of shaved emeralds. Legionaries surrounded the space stoically. A run of venerable steps rose from the yard and led to the front doors of the central palace keep. The arch of the entrance writhed with graven images – maidens in complicated dresses; knights with swords held aloft; goron warriors wreathed in armor and wielding warhammers; mysterious figures wrapped in cloaks. Many of the sculptures were large enough to see from the carriage as it swung across the courtyard. We eventually came to a smooth stop before the stairs.

Sir Walther Kael made a show of riding stiffly in a circuit about the courtyard, eventually trotting back into the gatehouse. His scowl lingered like a rancid smell.

An unfamiliar man waited before the palace entrance, arms crossed and gaze dispassionate. His white mustache twitched at our approach.

I felt Tash shift beside me. He craned his gaze up the entrance steps. It's debatable whether I actually saw his skin blanch.

"Hoo boy. If I didn't need any other evidence o' how big this is . . ." the rancher muttered as the vehicle slowed.

"What?"

Tash nodded in the direction of the man lingering below the keep's doors. An upright, unshakable-looking fellow. He held himself as if he knew exactly what he was about to do and how he was going to do it. Undeniably old, but with an almost imperceptible toughness running under his skin. It looked as if his hair had once toyed with the idea of receding, then decided at the last minute to lose all color instead. His mustache was a magnificent handlebar affair, tapering to points that curved toward the sides of his lips. He wore a crisp gray suit of the same weird Hylian style as Tash's. Over this, he boasted a heavy brown garment that was half-robe, half-waistcoat. On his breast was pinned a golden broach depicting House Harkinian's thunderbird device.

"That there's the Prime Minister. Rauru al-Ramarji. Been a friend and confidante o' the King damn near all o' his life." Tash favored me with a dark, thoughtful look. "He's almost certainly the second most powerful man in Hyrule." He coughed. "Some'll say he's the first."

The carriage driver pulled open the door facing the keep. He bowed and bid us exit. I watched Prime Minister Rauru (ah Christ, I thought) step lightly down the stairs. Tash disembarked first, placed his body between me and the Prime Minister, and strode forward to greet him.

"Prime Minster Ramarji!" Tash bellowed. "This is an immense honor! Absolutely an honor, sir!" He took Rauru's arm and pumped it with friendly enthusiasm.

"Lord Lon," the Prime Minister answered. His voice was thin, but smooth and measured. A man used to talking in low tones. Beneath that liquid voice was an accent that I could not at all identify. "All of Hyrule thanks you for your presence this morning, my Lord." He bowed slightly and allowed his metered gaze to slide my direction.

I conquered the sensation that I was about to vomit up my intestines, breathed deep, and stepped out into the courtyard. The valet closed the carriage door behind me with a rather final _click_.

"Prime Minister," Tash announced, "this here is Linus Olsen – the Hero o' the Triforce!" His pride in those words was palpable.

Rauru al-Ramarji observed me coolly. A gaze so clinical I half-expected to find myself in a hospital gown. His eyes zipped up and down my frame; locked onto the pommel of the Master Sword at my hip; rolled over my face as if trying to memorize it. Up this close, I saw at last that his irises were actually deep silver. Of course, I then noticed that his ears were longer and thinner the usual Hylian model. The Minister was a Shiekah.

At last, he said, "Well met, Linus Olsen. On behalf of the royal family and all free peoples of Hyrule, I welcome you to the Imperial Palace." Rauru nodded gravely and took my arm at the elbow. His grasp was papery. It lingered longer than I would have liked.

"Know, however, that today's gathering will _not_ welcome you as the Hero."

A wretched pause, punctuated damnably by birdsong.

"In fact, your audience and examination will determine whether you are who is claimed you are or if you are just another impostor." His voice remained even as a canal bed. "We have had so many, you see. I'm certain that Lord Lon has already informed you as such. Do you understand?"

What could I do? Say no? Of course not. I nodded and felt my bones fill with growing, alkaline panic.

"Very good," the Prime Minister said. "Lord Lon: Are you prepared to present this fellow to the court?"

No hesitation. "Aye. Absolutely, Prime Minister, sir."

"Then follow me. You are the last of the guests to arrive. No doubt they wait in the audience hall even now."

Rauru turned and flowed back up the stairs. Never even the slightest break in his stride. Tash and I followed as we knew we had to. The last sound I heard before entering the Imperial Palace was a cricket clicking experimentally from the hedges surrounding the courtyard.

Few structures ever flummoxed me more than that first trip into the halls of the palace. Sure, the magnificent entry hall – with its stratospheric vaulted ceiling; stained glass windows; arabesque floor mosaics; and marble statues of kings and heroes – was easy enough to navigate. Past that, though, all fell into madness.

Rauru led us through a pair of booming double doors and into a quickly blurring chaos of halls and chambers. We were swept down one corridor, then another. Support columns sped past. Watercolor paintings and tapestries like alien signposts. Grimly drawn faces watched us approach from half-closed doors. Light flooded in like revelation through tall windows that looked out onto the green and gray splendor of the palace grounds. Every room flitted with scents of rare spices and sandalwood incense.

There was a quiet, unnerving buzz about this place. Every figure partially glimpsed down hallways and in adjacent chambers moved as if walking over broken glass. In distinct contrast to the enrapt expectation across the lake in Midtown, it felt as if everyone in the palace was waiting for a bomb to go off.

The trip between the keep's entrance and the royal audience chamber was not a long one, but it did give me enough time to psyche myself into stupidity. Rauru's chilly introduction had planted a seed of dread in me that was quickly spreading black tendrils from my heart out into the whole of my body.

It was simple, really: These people – these _royal _people – had no real confidence in me. They had already made up their minds that I wasn't and couldn't possibly be the Hero of the Triforce.

And why should they? For five years, the King and an entire kingdom worth of retainers had waited for the Hero to arrive and solve all their problems. How many had died hoping for the Link to save them? How many impostors had the King and his Council already dismissed? How many times had they felt the joy rise in their chests, only to feel it smothered in the banal sludge of disappointment? At this point, why should they even give me the time of fucking day?

No matter how hard I tried . . . No matter the ancient relic I bore . . . This was going to be one hell of an uphill battle.

"His majesty will, of course, be using the private audience chamber rather than the ceremonial one," Rauru muttered as he pushed through yet another door.

We hurried through a ballroom brilliant with morning sunlight. Our footsteps resonated loudly between the polished floor and pearlescent ceiling, where great ribs of marble ran like whale bones.

Tash echoed, "O' course, Prime Minister, sir."

Shitshitshit, I thought, still rolling through the implications of the current crisis. Oh _shit_. What was I going to do about this? How was I going to convince the King of an entire bloody country that I was his shining savior?

Did I even want to?

The swiftly diminishing effect of the breakfast wine made my tongue feel rubbery and my forehead greasy. My stomach clutched irritably at the sour mash in its folds.

So: They were expecting another impostor. Wait – would they have called in every nobleman in Hyrule if they really, _really _thought I was nothing but another conman? Of course not. This was a bona fide _to-do_ now. If Prime Minister Rauru – not to mention the King – really believed that I wasn't the Hero, they wouldn't have even invited me here. Hell, I'd probably be in a prison cell by now. Or swinging from a rope, I thought morosely.

No – despite the professed skepticism of the man now leading me deeper into the palace, the most important jury was still out. There must be enough evidence of my heroism– and enough hype surrounding it – that the King had decided to make a ceremony out of all this.

And yet they still have doubts, the Other Me whispered demonically. Maybe they're just setting you up for a great big fall. Use you as an example to anyone who would consider impersonating the Link.

For such an old man, the Prime Minister took strides like a fucking elephant. Tash huffed and wheezed as he power-walked to keep up.

Okay, I thought. So, you know that they're not inclined to believe in you. What does that mean? What can you do?

My skin felt too clammy; my face, poorly shaved. Every step and gesture felt gawky and unpleasant.

Determinedly: I bring my A-Game is what I do. You already asked yourself, _Who better but me_? Well, isn't that the fucking truth? Haven't you been playing as Link your _entire life_?

In the coming minutes, it was imperative that I had to _prove _that I was the warrior of legend. Not only that: I needed to convince the King, the Prime Minister, and all of the Council of Lords that I had been appointed by the goddesses themselves to save Hyrule.

This was to say nothing of _Princess fucking Zelda_, whom I had been trying not to think about. Every time I turned over the simple words, "The Princess," I felt some phantom organ near my spine twitch and shrivel.

I had to knock all of their goddamn socks off. I had to show them that I knew Hyrule – and the role of the Hero – better than anyone else.

My bowels churned at the thought. All the same, a certain impetuous smile cracked my lips. I could already feel an anticipatory hum of gambler's adrenaline in my fingers and elbows.

Down one last hallway we went. Purple velvet draperies hung over bay windows. A well-worn carpet muffled our approach. Candles guttered in glass globes despite the daylight. Rauru al-Ramarji cast a flat glance back at us and swung open a nondescript door to our right.

We entered, well . . . it's hard to really approximate what sort of room it was. It was a broad, gloom-soaked chamber heavily carpeted and lined with prismatic wallpaper. Fading tapestries of an unfamiliar style hung from fat support pillars. There were no windows, but lamps glowed pallidly from sconces about the walls and columns. Pieces of wonderfully sculpted and upholstered furniture sat empty and forlorn about the place, despite the absolute hive of activity buzzing around them.

Everywhere there swarmed servants and vassals and attendants and pages and maids and messengers and valets. The chamber burbled with a constant river of low voices.

Clustered in niches along the walls and in shadows thrown by pillars were men of a different sort. Hard fellows with keen, hungry faces. Most wore suits and trousers of fine make, but others openly flaunted padded doublets, mail shirts, and even eclectic bits of plate armor. All bore colored badges or armbands, each of which was stamped or sewn with the device of a noble House. Swords waited on their hips like dark promises.

Whether rushing to and fro or idling ominously, everyone ceased moving at the Prime Minister's approach. Their stares were by turns icy and incredulous. A pair of maids, far out of earshot, exchanged ecstatic whispers.

"Is that really him?" I heard a boyish voice mutter.

At the end of the chamber brooded a final pair of double doors. In their dark, gleaming façade was carved a menagerie of twisting, animalistic shapes. Monsters capering amid a jungle of mahogany vines and bushes. A sinuous field of claws, leathery wings, and mouths like iron maidens.

Rauru stopped briefly and waved back at us to do the same. "Wait here," he grumbled. The Prime Minister stepped to an unobtrusive group of men standing to one side of those monster-laden doors. They were, I now noticed, dressed in quality clothing but were armed as soldiers. Legionaries in civilian dress.

The Prime Minister spoke in murmurs with a paunchy (but admittedly solid-looking) member of this troupe. He glanced back at Tash and me regularly as he spoke. The legionary chuckled lowly, said something in a voice swamped with smoke and years, and gestured to the doors.

When the Prime Minister returned, the assembled serving-folk were whispering up a quiet windstorm. He leaned in close to Tash and said, "The King and Council await. Lord Lon – you will go first, to your customary seat. Mister Olsen?"

I nodded numbly.

"Follow two paces behind Lord Tashiel. Sit only after he has taken his chair, to his right."

Was this guy a Minister or a fucking wedding planner?

Without missing a beat, Rauru continued, "I shall enter last. Has Mister Olsen been schooled in the proper behavior?"

I'm right here, dickcheese!

Tash nodded soberly.

"Very good." Prime Minister Ramarji folded his hands before his abdomen. His lips quivered and his mustache drew down like an apostrophe. "Now, gentlemen . . ." he said softly, ". . . it is time that we shed light on what – and _who _– our future holds. Farore's luck to you. Long live the High King!"

Legionary hands grasped curved iron handles. Graven beasts seemed to pounce and writhe as the doors were pulled open. Beyond were white light and echoes.

Following on Tash Lon's heels, I crossed the threshold that separated two eras of my life. I had no idea how much would change with that simple footstep.


	29. 29

**29**

This was it. I finally acknowledged – heart in my throat and guts in my shoes – that this was the most important moment of my entire life.

As I entered the audience hall from the dim antechamber, my vision was more or less obliterated. Soft as it was, the light spreading from high windows completely wiped away the world. I felt nothing but silk and wool against my skin; heard not but distant whispers and boots landing on stone; tasted only the sour ghosts of wine and porridge; sniffed at whorls of marble dust, ancient leather, candle smoke, and something sweet as dried apples.

This exquisite blindness only lasted a few blinks. Nonetheless, there was something calming about those purgatorial moments. A reminder that – despite the momentous ceremony in which I was about to partake – the world remained a constant, understandable place.

When the audience chamber fell back into focus, that calm vanished beneath a tidal wave of rank anxiety. It wasn't the room itself, regal and overwhelming as it was. No: it was the small army of faces that now followed me like jackals on the hunt.

The Imperial Palace's audience chamber was as ornately appointed as all other rooms in the central keep. Floors of beautifully veined marble. Surrounded by pillars so white they seemed to glow. Walls covered in mosaics so elegant that they made the Lons' home look like the creation of a kindergartener. A vaulted ceiling lined with bay windows, which poured in morning radiance in an ethereal cascade.

In the rough center of the chamber rose a stone dais, upon which lay a lush purple carpet and three imposing thrones. These were huge and obviously ceremonial seats, carved from wood as dark as frozen night and inlaid with flowing arteries of gold.

The central throne stood tall as a tree, its back crowned with its own variegated crown of black spires. Just beneath these spines flew a magnificent graven thunderbird, its sleek feathers wrought in ebony, talons in silver, and screaming beak in gold. On its breast was a bulging, alabaster eye, which shed a single ruby tear of blood. Something about the sigil sent a bleak shiver down my back.

Though just as elaborate as the throne perched on the dais's center, the other two seats were not nearly as overwhelming in size or ornamentation. To the central throne's left was a chair watched over by carvings of robed women, which I supposed were meant to represent the three goddesses. To the right was the smallest of the seats, which was nonetheless a bustling column of shining knights, kneeling maidens, and abstract androgynies in heroic poses.

All three of these seats yawned emptily.

It was through a suffocating void of silence that I trekked, following Tash over the polished floor. Even though dozens of people already occupied the chamber, no one said a word. I wanted someone to at least whisper or cough or make a pithy aside. Nonetheless, no one said a single goddamn thing. I barely even heard breathing. It was like wandering into some awful gathering of living corpses.

They were gathered about the walls in their noble clusters. Men – and a few isolated women – clothed in outfits so ostentatious and expensive that I felt a ragged beggar by comparison. All watched Tash and I with expressions ranging from fear to disdain to enraptured anticipation.

Since I was trying to focus on not tripping over my own feet, it was difficult to get a lay of the human land. Still, it was impossible not to pick out individuals and groups worth keeping an eye on.

Nearest the entrance crouched a blunt brick of a man, all gray whiskers and concentrated glower. He wore a black suit much like Tash's and balanced a top hat on his knees. He nodded grimly to Tash as we turned toward our seats.

On the right side of the room sat a prim, middle-aged woman who had dyed her hair brilliant silver and her skin a shimmering gold. To look at her was to glimpse something so weird it felt like it belonged on a movie screen.

Standing blithely to the left side of the chamber was a pair of men that were – and I write this with no trace of masculine insecurity – two of the most devastatingly handsome people I'd ever seen. They shared similar heights and fine, sand-colored hair. Other than that, they were quite different animals.

One was built like a greyhound and wore his sharply cut ivory suit like a second skin. His eyes were quick, jolly green sparks.

The other was a roaring rampage of manly beauty. He had the face of a Greek sculpture and sported a trim, championship-grade beard. His body was covered in astonishingly wrought crimson armor, decorated with a jagged filigree of silver. When he caught sight of me, the armored noble raised a gloved hand to his lips and scowled.

A clump of vibrantly colored eccentrics was seated in one corner. Some were robed in robin's-egg blue; others wore suits cut from cloth green as forest moss. Two wore bright yellow shakos and what looked like rain ponchos the color of nuclear nectarines. They all watched the final procession with keen, naked interest. Only one of their number was dressed drably – a young fellow sitting painfully straight amid a long, dull brown coat.

My guts lurched as I realized that this man was none other than Shad, the alchemist who had challenged me in Oloro Town. His cool eyes followed my progress like that of a lab rat. There was no malice in that gaze – only a kind of mordant pity.

I remembered the "tests" Shad had promised to run on the samples he had taken off the Master Sword. My tongue ran nervously over the back of my teeth. Surely he couldn't have performed such an examination already. Surely. Had he?

But why would he be here if he hadn't?

Aw fuck. Fuckfuckfuckity_fuck_. If I wasn't sweating before, I definitely began to now.

Suddenly, Tash was taking a seat along the wall facing the dais. His eyebrows bobbed up and he indicated that I drop into the chair beside him. A precipitous fall indeed.

Two pairs of seats were set up to either side of the central dais. One would soon be occupied by Prime Minister Rauru al-Ramarji as he followed Tash and me into the chamber. The other three chairs were already filled: one by a corpulent man in almost comical-looking armor; another by a gratingly grinning Sir Erik Perun; and the last by a robed, elderly man so thin and frail that he looked like the ghost of Jacob Marley. This last figure leaned his weight into a walking stick clutched in his skeletal hands. He smiled beatifically, as if he alone were privy to the knowledge that God was in His heaven and all were right with the world.

Behind the royal platform were arrayed ten legionaries in heavy ceremonial armor. They flanked doors much like the ones that Tash, Rauru, and I had come through. Though it was difficult to tell (with my view partially blocked by those magnificent thrones), I was fairly certain that this portal was not covered in beasts. Instead, these doors seemed to march with entire armies of figures in strange armor, wielding weapons as fantastic as they were absurd.

Once the Prime Minister had slid across the room and lowered himself to his place next to the dais, the hush gripping the audience chamber became a gelatinous, corporeal thing. Anticipation swam sourly through the air.

My gaze kept flitting to Shad and his dispassionate expression. From the corner of my eye, I saw the man in red armor grimace and finally take his seat. Shrugging as if conceding a game of backgammon, his green-eyed companion grinned and did the same.

After a short but uncomfortable period of seat-shifting and low grumbling, Rauru appeared to finish savoring the room's unease. He leaned to Erik Perun, whispered a few choice words, and then folded his hands serenely across his knees.

The High Herald – clad in a purple version of the cape he had been wearing the day before – stood and pulled a solid golden staff from beside his chair. His playful expression vanished behind a mask of ceremonial stoicism. Sir Erik raised his staff as if invoking a pagan god and struck its base against the stone tiles. The sound resonated through the audience chamber like a gunshot. Twice more he slammed it into the marble.

Sir Erik Perun boomed, "All rise and pay tribute to the High King of the mighty Kingdom of Hyrule!"

We stood. An aching, slit-eyed pageant. Across the hall, the doors crowded with heroes cracked open. In the lamp-lit shadows beyond waited vague figures. Gloom-laden silhouettes just past the veil between light and febrile darkness. The first of their number pulled back its shoulders and crossed that numinous threshold.

King Daphnes Harkinian strode into his audience chamber like a legend sung into life.

The King advanced to his throne with a sureness of foot that bespoke absolute ease – the kind of towering confidence one achieves only through total control of one's surroundings. He was a large man, both in stature and in presence. Perhaps the tallest man I'd yet seen in Hyrule. His steps were so long that he crossed the room to the dais in less than a half-dozen strides. Beneath plum-purple robes, his shoulders were boxy and solid as chunks of granite.

While not an old man by any stretch of the imagination, King Harkinian was clearly on the down-slope side of his years. His bristly, militarily trimmed hair was a patchwork of powder white and iron gray. A broadly boned face had long since given way to worry lines and furrows. Along with a heavy tan, his skin had the look of clay left just a little too long in the kiln. He sported a full beard that was gray as pumice and as evenly trimmed as a hedgerow.

Harkinian took in his audience with intense blue eyes. They were arctic, analytical orbs – focusing on nothing, yet seeing everything. Motile sapphires buried beneath the crag of his brow.

The King ascended the dais and settled stiffly onto the central throne. He dropped his massive hands over the graven armrests. Beneath his voluminous robes, the King wore a stunning golden breastplate. Upon it was inscribed yet another rendition of House Harkinian's thunderbird crest. This was the stylized version seen stamped on Rupees and familiar to me from the games of my youth. A powerful symbol wrought in onyx.

A glimmering platinum circlet sat atop the King's brow. Quite a simple royal crown, save for a centrally set symbol that I never thought I would actually be surprised to see: a Triforce, forged in gold. The power of darshan literally given unto one man.

All gathered took to one knee and traced three triangles before their faces. This time, I had no choice but to join them. We remained there, knees digging uncomfortably against the marble floor, and turned our eyes down in deference.

Again the High Herald's staff banged like an explosion. Sir Erik Perun's voice intoned: "Rise and give homage to the Crown Princess – heir of House Harkinian and divine successor to the Hylian throne!"

Impossible as it seemed, my heart seized and constricted even further. In my mind's eye, the organ was now the size and texture of a rotten walnut. When I rose to my feet with the rest of the audience, I was genuinely afraid that I might pass out.

Through the far doors came a tiny-framed figure, draped in a pale lavender cloak. From its fringes dangled lines of iridescent jewels the size of chickpeas. A glittering edge of opals, amethyst, and pearls. This shrouded form took short, shuffling, uncertain steps. A gait as stiff and exacting as the King's had been casual.

When she came round the edge of the room, two handmaidens followed at her heels. I caught sight of a round, ashen face beneath the hood of the cloak. Under that flowing outer garment, the Princess was wrapped in a habit of cowl, head-wrap, and half-veil. Her gown was a exquisite creation of eggshell white, sharp violet, and cloth-of-gold. The layered clothes conspired to hide all but the Princess's downturned face from the world.

She was short and slight and shared her father's striking lapis eyes. Curls of blonde hair slipped from beneath her cowl.

Zelda.

I realized with a start that she couldn't be more than twelve or thirteen years old.

The two attendants flanked the Princess as she stepped up to the dais. Both were young; both were pretty in their own odd ways. Each was concealed beneath similar – though far less opulent – cloak-cum-habits as the Princess's.

One was short, plump, and apple-cheeked. She smiled coyly. Something clever and intelligent sparkled in her leaf-green eyes.

The other attendant was damned tall for a woman – even taller than me_, _actually. Her willowy limbs – though unseen beneath those heavy garments – had to check themselves to match the Princess's painful stride. The hood of her cloak cast shadows across her pale face. When the light caught her narrow eyes, they shimmered like purple gems.

Both women took position behind the Princess as she settled onto the smallest of the thrones. The girl had to scramble a bit to get comfortable.

She looked miserable. Drawn, gray, listless, and tired. Very tired. Obvious swathes of powder makeup couldn't hide the dark, sunken patches beneath her eyes.

With his daughter thus situated, the King raised one mighty hand. He smiled paternally and rumbled, "I bid you be seated."

All obeyed.

King Harkinian spoke with a rich, deep voice that nonetheless sounded weirdly halting – as if he had to really work to get the words to line up correctly. It was flawlessly spoken stuff, no doubt, but it still sounded as if he had to stop for a millisecond every few words in order for his mouth to catch up to his brain. The King talked with the same strange, light accent that I had noticed Rauru using in our first meeting.

I leaned in my seat and made sure not to miss a single word. For all I knew, my life might be on the line here.

The King declared, "Welcome, trusted members of my Court and Council. My advisors; my counterweights; my confidantes; my polite critics;" (and he said the next part with genuine affection); "my friends. We are gathered today in the sight of the goddesses to redress a great confusion.

"I do not need to tell you that a terrible darkness grips these lands. For five long, painful, _frustrating_ years, we have watched as an ancient evil has invaded and laid waste to fair Hyrule. Our brave Legions have fought with all their might against its encroachment . . . and yet, they have succeeded only in containing its poison."

Princess Zelda's eyelids drooped theatrically, barely five minutes into the audience. The tall attendant lightly touched the Princess's shoulder, as if in reassurance.

King Harkinian's eyes were implacable as glaciers as he swept them over the chamber. "We do not like to speak the name of this evil," he continued. "Indeed, some of us do not even acknowledge that it _has _a name. There are those that still cling to the notion that this is a mundane power that we now face – that all the signs and stories of our forefathers are little more than children's tales."

The roar that rose in the King's voice was so sudden and so overpowering that I actually twitched in my seat.

"BUT KNOW THIS!" he bellowed, words echoing like cathedral bells. "Know that this terror that Hyrule struggles against – this so-called 'Protectorate' – is known to us! It has a body and a purpose! It was known to our ancestors and they gave it a name.

"IT IS GANON! The Old Darkness. Cursed of the goddesses! He who was born of man's sins and thus destined to return again and again to punish our wickedness! Ganon is come again and all who deny it are – not by my decree, but by all that is empirical – _fools_. Fools who will soon know the terrible days of prophecy in which we live."

At this, murmurs broke out among the groups of noblemen. Some – a barrel-shaped man in a blue and gray robe in particular – looked outright mortified. To my surprise, Tash thumped his fist against the arm of his chair and cried, "Hear hear!"

For all the fury of this declaration, the King had not moved a muscle other than on his face. The dude was solid. He was stone.

Harkinian waited for the whispers and scurrying commentary to die down before continuing. "Now . . . it is true that the scriptures of antiquity are fragmented at best. It is true that many of the old prophecies are, ah, _allegorical _in nature."

The King looked meaningfully at the geriatric man seated beside the dais. Though the old man met Harkinian's eyes, he continued to simply grin like a child. An expression fit for a birthday party, perhaps, but not a royal event like this.

The Princess rolled her eyes.

"Nonetheless," the King said, "we do know that a demon, named Ganon since the time of King Alvin the Uniter, has attacked Hyrule age after age. For thousands of years, Ganon's manifestation has heralded terrible disaster for our nation and our people. Each time he is reborn, Ganon wreaks a savage vengeance upon the goddesses' chosen land. I – and dare I say, the majority of my subjects – believe that we live in one of those fabled eras. Before it ends, we will see blood and terror on a scale inconceivable to our grandfathers!"

"Hogwash," someone muttered. I never figured out who.

Taking it in stride, the King softened his tone. "But . . . my friends . . . in the goddesses, there is always hope. For as long as they have allowed Ganon to reap their followers, they have also sent protectors to drive him back into darkness. Heroes, charged by the goddesses and imbued with their power. Even as Ganon draws potency from his sinful glimpse into the Sacred Realm, the chosen Hero of the Goddesses is granted courage, wisdom, and strength by that same divine promise. It is said that he bears its mark. He heralds the goddesses' will.

"He is the Link to the Triforce. The Hero of Destiny. The man who has saved Hyrule from destruction and swept Ganon back into Hell countless times. As Ganon rises, so too does the Link."

A small jolt ran through me as I finally figured what the King's accent reminded me of. I'd be goddamned if the syllables were almost _Scandinavian_.

"Ever since the Declaration of Blood, we have waited with increasing impatience for a sign of that Hero's arrival. Long overdue is the man who will free us from Ganon's grotesque bondage. Many times men have tried to claim the title for themselves . . . and many times we have been gravely disappointed."

Oh God. Those dark blue eyes now hovered squarely on me.

"Some of you may already know that, three days ago, extraordinary events took place in Eldin Province. Too long have the plains provinces been plagued by degenerate raiders, who slipped across the Legions' lines during the shameful events in Eldus of last year. One of these raider bands, led by that blackguard, Elkan Fir-Bulbin," (at this, much of the audience hissed like a collection of leaky kettles), "attacked Oloro Town and managed to scale its walls. In the uncanny events that followed, Fir-Bulbin was slain and some say that the Link to the Triforce at last let himself be known."

Dude, come on. You can stop staring at me like that. People are starting to talk.

"Of course, all of this tired oratory is merely a preamble," Harkinian chuckled. "It is to prepare all of you – Court, Council, and honored guests – for the task that lies before us. Today, we must determine whether one man, who comes to us from a most unusual background, is in fact _the Hero of the Triforce_. We must weigh the evidence and conclude once and for all what to do with his claim. For his is – so far as we can tell – the best and most deserved claim to the title we have thus seen."

Another round of light harrumphing ensued. The King looked almost amused by the Council's disparate grumblings. He must have been rather used to it. I expected even more speechifying, but was surprised when Harkinian merely gestured to Sir Perun and pronounced, "Let it begin."

Sir Perun sprung from his chair, staff in hand, and knocked it soundly against the floor. The resonations quieted the peanut gallery more thoroughly than any of the King's words.

The High Herald smiled devilishly and called, "Lord Tashiel of House Lon: Rise and be recognized!"

So, Tash rose. He looked nervous, but there was a learned confidence in his steps. He strode to the center of the audience chamber, stopped a few paces from the dais, and ponderously went to one knee.

"Err. Hail the High King," Lord Lon murmured. "I serve at his majesty's pleasure."

This was a standard opener. Tash had drilled it into me about a zillion times the night before. I had heard it in my head as I fell asleep.

King Harkinian let a pleased smile grow through his beard. A thin, spidery scar rippled over his lips. "Please. Stand." When Tash had done so, the King said, "Lord Lon. Tash. How do you fare?"

"Well, your majesty." The rancher-lord blinked, then blurted, "In fact, majesty, I'd say I'm better than well. I ain't felt so good in some years. Ya' could say there's a spring in my step, your majesty."

"Well, that is fine indeed!" Harkinian laughed. He stroked an absent finger across the fringe of his beard, grinning. It was instantly clear how much the man liked Tashiel Lon. "I must admit that I and all of the Court were worried for you. We had heard rumor that you were set upon by moblin raiders while en route to the capital."

Tash shrugged. "Aye, majesty. That's the truth, it is. Weren't so terrible as it could have been. Malora got shook up pretty bad an' I took a bit o' a bump to the noggin, but all told we came out just fine. It was _this_ man who made it so, your majesty."

With a sweep of the hand so smooth and theatrical that it seemed given by another man entirely, Tash pointed to my chest. He beamed triumphantly.

"Oh?" the King said, clearly not as surprised as he let on. "Please explain, my friend."

Tash launched into a disconcertingly detailed account of my appearance on the Eldin Plains and the subsequent battle with Karrik's raiders. He continued through our gobsmacked journey to Oloro Town.

"Now, your majesty . . . lads n' ladies o' the Council . . ." Tash said, clearly on a roll, ". . . you will notice that this here fellow is an outerlander. His ears, his accent, his way o' speakin' and actin' – they all mark him as a man from beyond Hyrule's borders. Naturally, this made me more than a bit suspicious o' the lad, eh? In times like these, what were the odds that such a foreigner would come bumblin' over me an' mine?"

Nods; mutters; a few half-hearted declarations of, "Hear, hear."

But oh, how Tash was contrite in explaining how wrong he had been. How he regretted his (perfectly justifiable) doubts! His account of my conduct at the Oloro Town Bathhouse would have needed heavenly choirs to be any more glowing. Thank God he left out the part where I stumbled into a crowd wearing nothing but a coat of blood and a deranged smile.

He did, however, swear to all three goddesses and the King himself that I _had _to be the Hero of the Triforce. There was, in his mind, no other explanation for what I had done and what Tash had seen of it.

"For such a strange an' bewilderin' fella, this here lad has one o' the biggest hearts I've ever seen," Tash gushed. "He stood up to those raiders like they was nothin'. Stood up to Elkan Fir-Bulbin hisself and _spat _in that monster's eye! He saved us all from that mob bastard! Err, pardon my language, your majesty."

That's not really how it happened, I thought dolefully. In fact, if you want to get technical, a lot of innocent people died because I was at that bathhouse.

"So, with your majesty's permission, I'd like to present this man – the man that I would stake my life an' fortune on bein' the Link."

The King nodded soberly and said, "You are welcome to do so."

Tash bowed and gravely pronounced, "I present to the Court an' Council Mister Linus Olsen – the man who saved my life! The man who'll save Hyrule!"

There was polite applause intermingled with plenty of hoarse grousing. I watched the noble in red armor lean to his lanky companion and whisper something. The man in the ivory suit smirked and said nothing in response. Atop her throne, the Princess looked at me with all the regard one gives a spider found trundling about a bathtub.

"We give you many thanks, Lord Lon," the King said. "Your testimony helps shed light on a subject too long left murky. You may take your seat."

Another bow. Tash said, "I serve at his majesty's pleasure!" and he meant the shit out of it. The rancher lumbered back to his seat. He was coated with perspiration and seemed rather pleased with his performance.

The next words that rang through the chamber hit me like a brick to the belly.

"Linus Olsen of the Outer Lands: Rise and be recognized."

Eyes of every rank and color turned upon me. To the left: jovial, unnerving green. From the dais: two pairs of irises like circles of evening sky. Behind the Princess's throne: liquid amethyst, suspended in sepulchral shadow.

I rose. I sweated and shook. I was certain that dark stains must be spreading from my armpits.

My legs felt no stronger than a newborn's as they propelled me across the hall. The entirety of my world shrank down to that central dais and the shaft of light falling upon it. The empty throne gaping with a sense of dire promise. The King, the Princess, and her attendants lined up like a jury about to pass sentence.

Was that what was about to happen? Was this gigantic, regal man about to order my death? Guilty of one count of impersonating a video game character? Another count of getting a bad tattoo?

Christ! Calm the hell down! You got this. Who else but you? Who the fuck else? Remember what you're here for. Remember what you have to do.

I realized that my feet had stopped moving. I knelt. My kneecap rubbed uncomfortably on the stone floor. I focused on shiny veins of dark gray as they swirled through the marble.

"Hail the High King," I felt myself mutter. "I serve at his majesty's pleasure."

"Linus Olsen," King Harkinian's voice echoed. His words were as big as a demigod's. "I bid you welcome to my capital and my kingdom. It is said that you have traveled far and long to Hyrule. How does it treat you?"

Go. Speak. Talk, dammit!

"I-it. It treats me . . . well." I swallowed. My meager words spun through the room like mocking ghosts. "Your majesty. I mean. The p-people of Hyrule have treated me, um, v-very kindly."

I chanced a look up at the thrones. Princess Zelda stared at me with her head tilted slightly, as if unable to decide what to make of me. Her wan lips were twisted up in a poor imitation of amusement. The handmaidens stared at me with rapt fascination. The one with purple eyes (Gotta be a Shiekah, I thought) was particularly unnerving in the intensity of her gaze. Her uncanny irises bored into me, dark and impenetrable.

King Harkinian, however, looked down on me amiably. Something both playful and gracious now crept into his voice. "Other than the, ah, _moblin _people," he said.

Laughter sifted in from the world outside my patch of the chamber. I didn't want to think about the dozens of people seated about the perimeter of the place. All watching like scavengers pacing about a dying animal.

I said, "Well. I. I mean – yeah. Everybody but them." An awkward pause. "Yermajestee," I coughed.

Chuckling, the King said, "Do not be frightened, Mister Olsen. I do understand that this is your first royal audience. I assure you that I will not have you hanged for forgetting to call me 'majesty.' After all, there are graver events afoot. In the meantime, all my charity and goodwill shall be extended to you. Until such time that we might deem otherwise, consider yourself an honored guest of the Imperial Palace."

The outer world of the chamber murmured, shuffled, and tittered.

In my chest, something ineffable finally knotted and pulled. I felt my mouth go dry.

Here it was: My opportunity.

I only had to show off a little bit. A small taste of twenty years of accumulated knowledge about this kingdom and its legends. I could reveal greater marvels at some latter interval. Now or goddamn never.

Before the King could continue, I spoke up. An undercurrent of noble whispers ran beneath my quick, breathless words.

"Your majesty," I said. "I want you to know that . . . well. I want you to know how m-much I appreciate this. I am truly honored to be in the presence of the great King Daphnes Harkinian." I couldn't let my eyes flick up. Couldn't betray the uncertainty compacted in their depths. "I am also honored to kneel before your esteemed daughter, _Princess Zelda_."

The chamber filled with a bottomless silence.

I knew instantly that I had fucked up.

I raised my head.

Suddenly, my field of vision was no longer confined to the dais and its inhabitants. It was unavoidable. I was surrounded by a forest of faces petrified into bewildered masks. Even the legionary guards standing sentinel along the back wall stared out with confusion and dismay.

Though he was at my back, I later learned that Tash had gone white as paper and appeared to drop about thirty pounds.

Before me, the dais looked like a diorama of figures caught the moment after a nuclear explosion. The previously round, cheerful-looking handmaiden had turned the color of old cheese and held a palm over her mouth. Her tall, creepy opposite had taken on the look of a particularly Gothic porcelain doll. Those unsettling eyes of hers had shrunken into arrow slits and her lips had gone blue and bloodless.

Aw man, but they were the least of my worries. The Princess . . . _Jesus_.

When my gaze fell to her, she looked like a tiny, feral cat wired to pounce. She grimaced with naked, overwhelming outrage and disgust. I'm not sure if I had ever seen that much malice concentrated in my direction.

Up to this point, Princess Harkinian had not spoken a single syllable. Now she produced a single, ear-splittingly shrill word:

"_Father_!"

She whipped about in her throne and glared at the King menacingly.

Well, that fucking did it. The audience chamber went up like a silo explosion. There were shouts; there was sighing; there were outbreaks of intense conversation among the attendees. A hideous babble of astonishment and indignation.

And the King? Well, shit. I'd thought I'd had an ally in the man – or, at the very least, a sympathetic ear that I could work toward bending. But now?

Daphnes Harkinian sat on his throne rigid as a statue. His huge fingers gripped the armrests of his throne as if hanging on for dear life. The King of Hyrule stared at me, unblinking, like I was a gremlin belched from the depths of Hell.

The unguarded fear in his eyes scared the ever-living shit out of me.

Shitfuckhellfuck _what the fuck did I DO?_

Though I remained kneeling, I pulled my torso straight. My hands rose reflexively, defensively. I expected a blow or arrow or lance point to come at any moment.

I impotently sputtered, "I – I didn't mean – I _didn't_ –"

"Impudent _wretch_!" the Princess hissed. She looked ready to launch out of her throne and claw my face off. "I should have you, you . . . _flogged_!"

Noblemen were rising from their seats and shouting entreaties to the paralyzed King. The congregation of oddly dressed men about Shad chattered excitedly. All those soldiers in the back of the room seemed to be tensing for a riot.

I tasted something bitter in the back of my throat. Bile.

It was Prime Minister Rauru al-Ramarji who broke the tumult. He rose from his seat, his face stately and intense, and spread his arms. The sleeves of his waistcoat flapped like seabird's wings.

"ORDER!" he boomed. "We will have ORDER in this chamber! Order, I say!"

The din began to die down. Individual voices still yammered, but the sudden boiling-over seemed to be at an end.

The Prime Minister stepped up to the dais and positioned himself before the empty throne at the King's left hand. He crossed his arms and looked down on me with an utterly inscrutable expression.

"This was merely a minor breach of protocol, my lords. An unfortunate mistake by a man unfamiliar with our ways." Rauru tilted his head to the King. "Your majesty, if I may?"

King Harkinian blinked rapidly, as if emerging from a hypnotic stupor. He nodded weakly.

Beside him, the Princess still seethed. Her rancor radiated like waves off open furnace.

Without thinking, I blurted, "Listen, guys – I mean – crap – _your majesty_. Princess. I don't know what – I just wanted to say –"

Great speech, Kennedy.

Rauru held up a hand and cut me off before I could embarrass myself even further.

"Pray hold your tongue, sir. You are an outerlander, and thus it is understandable that you know little of our kingdom or its ways. First of all, it is disrespectful to speak out of turn as you did." Rauru's eyes shone like silver buttons in the light of the upper windows. "Second: You must have misheard or were given bad information on your journey here. You are mistaken in your praise.

"Know that you kneel in the presence of the Crown Princess Ilia Harkinian."


	30. 30

**30**

I went numb. Every inch of me; every ounce of me. My lips worked like the gills of a fish tossed onto dry sand.

How could I have been this goddamn stupid? How could I have not asked the simple question that would have saved me from this hideous mess? Had the Lons mentioned the Princess's name during those periods when I had tuned out their endlessly confusing conversations? And if they hadn't – why not?

No use blaming them, Linus. You know exactly who's responsible for your current pickle. God-_fucking_-dammit!

"Hmph!" Princess Ilia fell back into her throne with a petulant snort. "Nothing to say for yourself, you ignorant wastrel?"

Rauru sighed and ran a hand over his high hairline. He cajoled, "Princess . . . while it _was _disrespectful of protocol, the fellow's outburst was made with good intentions. Mister Olsen only wanted to express his excitement at being in your august presence." With leading gravity, the Prime Minister said, "Is that not correct, Mister Olsen?"

I nodded with the loose-necked motion of a wooden puppet.

Everyone ringing the chamber leaned and listened intently. While this was no longer An Incident, it was certainly fine drama.

Still trying to assuage the irritated Princess, Rauru grew a dyspeptic smile and said, "These kinds of outbursts are to be expected from commoners, Princess. Such fame and opulence as yours tends to drive them to uncalled-for displays of gratitude. Their senses are overwhelmed."

Though I wanted to tell the Prime Minister to go fuck himself, some still-functioning portion of my higher brain tamped down the instinct. Instead, I nodded emphatically. Yes, exactly. I totally called you the wrong name because I was blown away by your courtly splendor. It's not as if I grew up with a fictional character that looks exactly like you, but goes by a different name. Honest.

Shit. This is bad, isn't it? At least Rauru – as dickishly as he was going about it – seemed to be leading things away from whatever Catastrophe Zone we had been teetering over.

The Crown Princess of Hyrule blew a raspberry and narrowed her royal blue eyes. "How uncouth!" she said. Her voice was high, lilting, and more than a little breathless. The cracked limbo-quality of adolescence warped its timbre. I noticed that the tall handmaiden had once again placed her hand on Ilia's shoulder.

"I think that we should throw him out," the Princess huffed, "like the uncivilized dog he is. No one this scruffy and . . . _foreign_ can truly be the Hero. Out with him!"

"_Ilia_."

The interjection slid in smooth as an arrow nocked on a bowstring. Its voice, dark and deep as the ocean. The King returned to his audience.

He looked at his daughter coolly. Harkinian murmured, "Despite the mistakes he has made, I have already declared this man our guest. I will not jeopardize this day because of a misunderstanding . . . or your wounded pride."

"But, _father_ . . ." Princess Ilia whined.

Daphnes Harkinian grimaced. He had teeth to match his stature – massive, flat-white things like marble bastions. "My dear," he whispered, "this is neither the time nor the place. This is _very _important. All our lives may depend on it. _Do not test me_."

Ilia deflated. A crushed, sorrowful look came over her. While she had been angry, a sparking, manic energy had filled her features. Now she returned to looking very thin and worn-out.

"Hmph!" she grunted.

There followed one of those weird silences that occurs in the wake of a meltdown that has just barely been averted. That, _Wait, did that just happen?_ sensation. A period of blinking, hard breaths, and personal accounting.

Prime Minister Rauru bowed woodenly and loped back to his appointed seat. The smaller handmaiden relaxed and allowed herself to pull back to her spot behind the Princess's throne. All about the chamber, there spread a collective sense of befuddled relief.

For my part, the adrenaline slopped into me by the brief spate of panic suddenly had nowhere to go. Now, not only did I have to deal finishing this godforsaken ordeal, but also try to cover up the fact that I was getting the shakes. Fuck!

With all at least superficially settled, King Harkinian cleared his throat and moved things forward.

"Though we have never hosted a foreign dignitary, one supposes that this is to be expected," he smiled. "I beseech all of you to calm yourselves and focus on the task at hand. However, I have one request of you, Mister Olsen."

I gulped and nodded.

The King stared at me levelly. "Pray tell: Where did you hear the name you spoke?"

God help me, I almost said it again. _Zelda_. Something strange and terrible moved in those two syllables. I dared not speak them aloud. Nor could I adequately explain their origin.

Gee, your majesty – it's just that there's _always _been a Zelda! She's _always_ been your daughter! And she's always been the lynchpin of the games you're in!

What's that, your majesty? No, I've never been to an insane asylum. Why do you ask?

So, of course, my lips took the ball and ran with it all the way out of the stadium. I said, "I h-heard it in a dream, your majesty."

Oh, good. Lies now? Way to dig yourself deeper, Linus. This should be interesting.

"A dream?" the King asked, eyebrows askance.

"Ah. Um. Yes. Majesty. Yeah. I," I suppressed the urge to scream and run, "I have strange dreams, sire. You majesty. Have for a while. Sometimes, they show me things that have happened and I wasn't there to see." Aaaand might as well go for the gold: "And sometimes they show me the future. Or as close to it as it gets."

"Dreams of prophecy, eh?" the King clucked. A curious hand touched his beard. "That is a strange, rare thing indeed, Mister Olsen."

"Very much so, your majesty." When this segued into contemplative silence, I plowed forth with, "They're not always right, honestly. It's hard to tell what's prophecy and what's just dream logic. I guess this was one that was wrong. For what it's worth, your majesty . . . I'm very sorry."

"We have moved beyond it," Harkinian sighed. He shot Princess Ilia a piercing sideways glance. "Haven't we?"

She just rolled her eyes and frowned.

The King, looking slightly defeated, said, "No matter. These dreams of yours are yet more evidence that you are, if not the Hero of legend, quite an extraordinary visitor to our nation. You will have to tell our sorcerously inclined attendees more about the phenomenon." He gestured vaguely toward the corner filled with rainbow-colored garments. Shad's dour brown form stuck out from them like a turd in a flower patch.

The King cracked a rueful smile. "Oh! You can stand now, Mister Olsen."

Thank God. My knee had started to ache in slow, dull waves.

"We have heard many tales of your bravery, Mister Olsen," King Harkinian said. He folded his hands before him. "Not only from Lord Lon, but also from trusted sources in Oloro Town. There are also – as a matter of course in Hyrule – some very odd rumors regarding you. We hope that you might shed light on some of these."

I said, "I'll certainly try, your majesty."

"Is it true that you defeated Elkan Fir-Bulbin – one of Ganon's fiercest raider captains – with your bare hands, while in the nude?" the King asked. He was, to my jittery surprise, actually being playful.

You could have lit the room up like a carnival with my face. "Well, um, I didn't actually kill him with my bare hands, your majesty."

Harkinian chuckled, "And your purported nudity?"

"That," I said wheezily, "majesty, was unfortunately true."

Without really thinking about it, I related the entirety of my pursuit and eventual victory in the Oloro Bathhouse. Sure, I casually edited certain parts out – I didn't actually tell the Court and Council about the Great Bay Drovers' Guild, for instance. But, in the act of total recall that I used to relate the tale, I ended up revealing that I was only tangentially related to Elkan's ugly death.

"Though I was there – and I really did fight him – Elkan more or less killed himself," I admitted. "If anything, I should have given the bounty to whoever built that pipeline."

I had expected outrage (and there _were _rough grumbles and lewd mutterings from the assembled lords), the King boomed patches of deep, stuttering laughter. This close to the foot of his throne, I saw now that a bramble-patch of twisting scar tissue spread from under Harkinian's chin and over the top of his neck. I wondered if that scarification spread under his beard and connected to the slight, whitish marks on his lips.

"Quite a tale, sir!" Harkinian spouted. "I can only commend you for your audacity. Many a man would have given up and died on their knees in such a situation."

"It was really only luck that I didn't, majesty," I shrugged.

"Not so, not so. At the very least, you may claim that you brought the fight to your enemies. Though they outnumbered and outrode you, you nonetheless helped drive them from Hylian lands. For that alone, we should honor you."

I inclined my chin and quietly said, "Thank you, your majesty."

"All that said, there are still perilous questions regarding your status," the King said. The jovial tone in his voice drained into something flatter and more businesslike.

"We here in Hylium have heard a number of tales regarding where it is that you come from, Mister Olsen. I would like to hear the definitive version – straight from the source, as it were. Where do you hail from? And how did you arrive in my kingdom?"

I gave him the short version. Well, as short as it could be made. I told the King and Court about Los Angeles and America and my life before coming to Hyrule. I spun the tale of falling into the endless tangle of the Lost Woods and discovering the resting place of the Master Sword. Then came the condensed version of my second return to Hyrule, now bearing the sword that I had taken from those ancient ruins. Of course I didn't go into fantastic depth – this was neither the time nor the place, right? I stuck with the explanation that my home was on the other side of the world, since there was no need to complicate issues with the dozen theories flying about my head.

Nonetheless, King Harkinian appeared displeased by this information. He rumbled, "How is it that you came to us, across so many leagues? Across oceans long impassable to even Hyrule's mightiest ships?"

"I don't honestly know."

Expectant silence.

I quickly continued, "The more I think about it, uh, sir, I mean, your majesty." Deep breath. "The more I think about it, the more I believe I came to Hyrule via sorcery. Some kind of magic."

Or madness, said the tiny, impish voice at the back of my head.

"But you are not certain of it?" the King asked.

"No. Like I said, I just _woke up_ in the Lost Woods. After I pulled the Master Sword from its pedestal, I ended up in Los Angeles again. A few days later, I walked into an alley at night and ended up on the plains of Hyrule by day. I have no idea how any of that happened. It just . . . _did_."

"And a sorcerer's spell is your best explanation."

"Yeah." My eyes darted to the pained expressions of the men flanking the dais. "Um. Your majesty."

I assure you that there is no silence as awkward as royal silence.

Kneading the flesh between his eyes and nose, the King heaved, "Yes. Of course. That will have to be investigated further. Our friends in the sorcerous guilds will be of assistance in such matters. It appears that you will need to debrief them – and soon.

"In any event, it is time that we consider the full question at hand: Are you, Linus Olsen, of this supposed 'Los Angeles,' the Hero prophesied by our forefathers?" The King speared a finger at my face. "Are you the man destined, in the words of our legends, to rise from low birth, retrieve the Master of All Swords, take hold the power of the three goddesses, and use it to defeat the Old Darkness? Are you the man _ordained_ by the heavens themselves to arrive in the hour of Hyrule's need?"

Were these rhetorical questions? Did he expect an honest answer? What if I didn't have one to give?

Smooth it down, man. You _do _have an answer. Several, in fact. Just don't go off half-cocked this time. Ask some actual questions instead of rushing in with old assumptions. _Pay fucking attention_.

My bones felt like wet cornmeal and I'm certain that my extremities trembled, but I managed to nod to the King and say, "That's for you decide, your majesty, isn't it?"

"Good," he acknowledged. "Then let us consider the most direct evidence you have to offer. Your sword please, sir."

Ah, a familiar dance. This time I had the pleasure of actually sliding the sword from a sheath. Before I knew it, Sir Erik Perun stood before me, palms up. No request was spoken, but it was plain enough. With resigned fear tingling my knuckles, I carefully set the sword over the High Herald's waiting hands. In turn, he swung about and marched the sword the few paces to the King. Harkinian took the weapon with delicate gravity. His eyes blazed with the Triforce seal on its hilt.

The room had taken that recurring, collective intake of breath as the Master Sword flashed out. Impossible not to notice. Even the doddering old man to the side of the King perked up at the silver, blue, and gold of the promised blade.

Exhalations like gusts of wind rolled in and out of the King's chest. His previous apathy annihilated. As familiar as the transition was (I could only think of Commander Len Groban, back in Oloro Town), I was still glad to see it.

With the Master Sword still resting across his knees, Harkinian looked up and commanded, "I beseech you to remove your shirt." For all the flatness of the order, his face was troubled.

Well. I had known this was coming. Self-preservation overmastered self-consciousness. Far larger audiences had seen me far more naked than this.

All the same, it was difficult not to feel the hungry packs of eyes as I fumbled over the buttons of my vest and undershirt. I tried to fold each, felt impatience souring the air, and simply let them fall to the floor. I angled myself to show off the Triforce mark to the King and all gathered about him.

To this point, I had grown used to a people who had never seen a real tattoo. Now, as I was studied again and again by the people atop the dais, I felt a new stab of certainty that I would be found out. Surely there had to be someone here who would know what body art looked like. I became convinced that, in the coming minutes, the King (or one of the men seated beside the dais) would stand and shout, _Impostor! Impostor!_ After all, it was so fucking obvious.

Hell, the tall handmaiden stared at me with such radiant intensity that I was sure that she would be the one to call me out on it.

At the King's request, I turned about as if I were on an auction block, showing off my pathetic bicep for all to see. The noblemen and women contorted themselves in their seats to follow the mark. I watched the raised eyebrows of the man in the ivory suit; the angry pursed lips of the man in crimson armor; the nonplussed brow of the golden woman; the jaded non-expression of Shad.

To my relief, no one said a word. I rotated twice before King Harkinian flicked a finger and told me to stop. It was impossible to read his face, which had transformed into a stoic sculpture.

Now what?

The King said, "You may take your seat for the moment, Mister Olsen. Pray remain as you are."

Oh.

"O-okay." When the King developed a look of sincere bewilderment, I swiftly said, "As you wish, your majesty. I serve at your p-pleasure."

God help me, I almost asked for my sword back. Instead, I gathered the clothes I had dropped on the floor, knelt perfunctorily, and returned to my seat, shivering.

The King leaned from his throne to confer first with Prime Minister al-Ramarji and then Sir Perun. As they spoke in frantic whispers, Princess Ilia seemed to will a storm of broken glass in my direction. A black cloud hung over her throne. Her attendants appeared uncomfortable at best. At last, Sir Perun stood and did his heralding shtick.

"Alchemist Shad of the Guild of Strangers: Rise and be recognized."

The alchemist took to the floor with clockwork movements. Was he nervous, excited, scared, or overwhelmed? His face betrayed nothing. He merely adjusted his spectacles and clutched his satchel tighter as he knelt before the King.

"Sir," Harkinian said, "though this is the first time I have had the pleasure of meeting you, your reputation is well known to me. I am told that you bring your guild great accolades. You may rise.

"Now: It is reported that you took samples from this man's sword for alchemic analysis."

Stiffly: "I did so, your majesty."

Okay, maybe he did sound a bit nervous.

"Quite a bold gesture. Some might cry heresy for such a thing," the King said.

"I . . ." Shad said, "I had doubts as to the sword's, ah, authenticity, majesty."

"As well might anyone!" said Harkinian, eyebrows aloft. "Many men have sought the title of Hero for themselves. While none have borne the Sword of the Temple to back their claim, it is not unthinkable that one might invite the wrath of the goddesses by forging a fake."

"Exactly, your majesty." Shad seemed to regain some of his cool. He straightened and puffed out his chest.

"You are a brave man nonetheless, sir. I am told that Oloro Town's fervor for the Hero was quite a thing to see."

"Ah, quite so. Quite so, majesty. Fortunately, Elder Thum backed my request. Mister Olsen, despite his, ah, initial objections, cooperated admirably."

Pfft. Whatever.

"Thum, eh? A good man." Harkinian inclined forward, eyes shining, and asked, "And then what happened?"

Shad pushed his spectacles up as he said, "I attached the samples to my personal eagle and sent them ahead of me to the guildhall here in Hylium. By the time I, ah, arrived by horseback, my colleagues were already administering the proper tests to the sample materials. I personally oversaw the final results, your majesty."

"And those results told you . . . ?"

The alchemist suddenly looked like he needed to find a toilet fast or face dire consequences. He took a huge breath and said, "Ah, yes, your majesty. It is with regret that I report that our tests were inconclusive."

"Inconclusive?" the King frowned.

Shad peeled off his glasses, began examining their lenses, and expounded: "First of all, the samples of metal and other materials were exceedingly small. I would have, ah, preferred to examine the blade in full. Circumstances being what they were, this wasn't feasible. I should like to do so in the future, if your majesty can arrange it."

Before the King could respond to this passive entreaty, Shad continued, "The Guild of Strangers has developed a standard battery of tests for magically imbued artifacts. For most of the samples, these proved useless. The blood retrieved from the blade was found to be, as expected, moblin in origin. A small shred of, ah, plant matter from embedded in the sword's hilt was similarly uninformative. A moss common to most of the temperate lands of Hyrule. The metal of the sword itself, however . . ."

Shad seemed to struggle for his next words. "Ah . . . alchemic analysis revealed steel of a very fine, very pure blend. We were unable to determine the site of its forging, but found its raw materials matched the properties of those milled in Hyrule. These were the most normal results of our testing. All else were, ah . . . _odd_."

"Odd?"

"Ah, yes, your majesty. Take, for instance, our attempt to post-alchemically date the weapon. An evolving process to be sure, but one the Guild of Strangers have been perfecting for quite some time. Three attempts to determine the weapon's age resulted in three wildly dissimilar dates.

"The first test said that the sword was five years old. The second gave an approximate forge date of some twelve-thousand years ago. The third, exactly 847 years."

"All rather different answers," the King said. "Which is the correct one? How often are these sorts of tests incorrect?"

Shad said, "Your majesty, as I said, this is a still-developing alchemy. Its products are often disputed between guilds, if not colleagues of the same order. We were certain that the first result proved the sword a mere facsimile. The second and third tests are, ah, standard in these kinds of examinations and were conducted identically to the first. Their date results are as reliable and – so far as we can tell – _correct _as the first."

"Thus," the King sighed, "they are worthless."

Stiffening, Shad coughed, "Not so, your majesty. Taken with other observations, the seemingly random forge dates do point toward a hypothesis. However, ah, tenuous as it may be."

The King gestured for him to continue, please.

"A postcognitive communion with the metal shards did not divine anything revelatory about the sword's origin. However, the mage who undertook the past-sight ritual did interpret images that appear to corroborate Linus Olsen's story." Shad patted his satchel. "Your majesty, I have here a copy of our report that contains a full summary of those images. As with all accounts of postcognition, a mage certified in the practice will need to vet the findings.

"Finally," Shad breathed, "there is, ah, one last observation that should be noted, for the Court and Council's consideration."

Though I hadn't realized I was doing so, I now leaned with palms planted on my thighs. My brow ached with concentration. Goosebumps rolled over my exposed skin.

Without prompting, Shad said, "On two different occasions, the sliver of metal taken from Linus Olsen's sword simply disappeared."

He let that hang in the air as if it were self-evident.

"You will need to explain that, sir," the King finally chuffed.

"During the first battery of tests," Shad exposited, "the steel shard was placed in a sealed jar for safekeeping. This was, I should note, before I arrived at the Stranger guildhall. One of my estimable colleagues, Alchemist Colin, was administering the tests at the time. He left his examination stage for five minutes to consult with others in the guildhall. When he returned, the shard and jar in which it was stored had both vanished.

"Of course, he first assumed that it had been taken by another researcher for testing. When it could not be located, Colin naturally believed that it had been stolen. Cries of, ah, _sabotage_ and _infiltration_ rang through our halls. Less than an hour later, the jar and its cargo were found . . . exactly where they had been in the examination theater."

Shad shrugged, seemingly more to himself than to anyone else in the audience chamber. "After I arrived and we had already subjected the piece of steel to many alchemic tests, it happened again. My colleagues and I did not even leave the room this time. We, ah, turned our backs to confer on measurements and returned to find the shard missing. This time, we calibrated watches and posted observers about the stage. I can report that, exactly six minutes and twelve seconds after the sliver disappeared, I blinked. Suddenly, the shard and its jar stood in the spot from which they had vanished."

A faraway look came over the alchemist's face. An expression that left me cold and slightly frightened. "All five observers reported blinking, your majesty. Five men looked away for no more than a piece of a second – at exactly the same time. Then the shard was there as if it had never left."

"What does that _mean_, though?" Harkinian asked, clearly troubled.

"Taken together, your majesty," Shad said decisively, "the full results do not indicate a concrete answer. However, I can say without a single doubt that Linus Olsen's sword is magically imbued. Its enchantments are strong enough to obfuscate tests designed to cut through such things. These, ah, properties are unlike anything we at the Guild of Strangers have ever seen."

"But is it the _Master _Sword?"

"Much more than three days worth of rushed analysis is needed to make such a conclusion, your majesty."

The King harrumphed quietly to himself; the Council joined him. Harkinian said, "I have only one more question for you, sir." A pause too dramatic not to be intentional. "In your opinion, sir, is Mister Olsen the Hero of the Triforce?"

Now, _that _made Shad look discomfited. He squirmed like a student called on unprepared during a lecture. He stammered, "My apologies, majesty, but . . . ah . . . a true alchemist should not make rash judgments."

While clearly dissatisfied, King Harkinian thanked Shad and dismissed him. The young alchemist scurried back to his seat, tension draining from him as he went. His movements diminished and went floppy. When he oozed into his seat between eccentrics, Shad looked ready to sleep for a month.

There followed a pattern: The King conferred with his advisors; the Princess attempted to murder me with her mind; Sir Perun clicked his staff on stone and called forth a new name.

"Count Werner Lopatus of the Guild Volcanum: Rise and be recognized."

One of the men in orange ponchos doffed his tall hat and took the floor. He answered questions on the difficulty of forging sorcerous weapons. Quite difficult, the Count assured Harkinian. _Prohibitively _difficult.

"Alchemist Dio Armitage of the Veridian Torch Guild: Rise and be recognized."

According to the man in the lime-colored suit, magic spells of physical transfer and/or teleportation remained only theoretical. Doing such a thing over the breadth of a planet? Impossible.

"High General Petyr Eldridge of the First Legion: Rise and be recognized."

The rotund gentleman sitting next to the dais took his turn on the floor. He testified that, in his august opinion, I could not have passed through Hyrule's admittedly nebulous borders without alerting a legionary outpost or local militia.

"Sage Karl al-Srivas of the Sump Street Guild . . ."

Minutia bled into minutia.

"Allyn Estarian of . . ."

Questions about the legend of the Hero. Muddled interpretations of lost scriptures. Calls to divine providence and intervention.

". . . Rise and be recognized."

With my shirt still off, I started to feel like I was sitting in an empty doctor's office, hands on my knees as I waited for grim test results. Even the soft daylight flooding the chamber started to take on a harsh, antiseptic quality.

"Rise and be recognized."

At length, the final call to witness: "High Sage Saharasla Minos: Rise and be recognized."

No one rose. No one even reacted.

Princess Ilia released an exasperated breath and pinched the flesh between her eyebrows.

The King looked to the left of the royal dais and coughed. After a moment of hesitation, he called out, "Saharasla! We have need of your wisdom, old friend."

This time, there was a response. The incredibly old man swaddled in brown robes perked up. His disheveled mustache bristled and he spread a yellowish-brown smile.

"Ooh? What, now? Is it time for your lesson, Daphnes?" he chirped, voice thin and tremulous.

The grumbling from the peanut gallery was low but intense.

"Honored teacher," Harkinian said. "We require your knowledge and experience. Today, we must discover whether the Hero of Legend – the man you have waited so long for – has come among us."

Saharasla smacked his wrinkled lips. "Mmm! The Hero, you say? How _exciting_!"

With the patience of a saint, King Harkinian said, "Perhaps, sir. I bid you rise and give your measure of the man. You, among all of Hyrule, are the most learned in the tales of our forefathers. Is this man the Hero who will bring our fight to Ganon?"

"Ah, terrible, terrible . . ." the High Sage muttered, shaking his head.

"Or," the King rumbled, "is he but a very determined impostor?" Harkinian ran a thumb over the top of the Master Sword's blade. The chipped steel shone like starlight.

Saharasla rose from his chair with rickety legs. He tottered precipitously across the chamber floor, staff clunking loudly with each step, and came to a swaying stop at a rather random spot.

"Ahoh!" the old man croaked. "Well, Daphnes, where is this supposedly heroic fellow of yours?"

"Mister Olsen – please rise and stand before the High Sage," Harkinian said. "Pay him your respect."

A strange meeting, this. Two people stepping toward one another under the watchful eyes of an entire ruling class. Up close, evidence of Saharasla's age only increased – if such a thing was possible. His liver-spot-bedecked skull was mostly hairless, but for a few wild and clumpy wisps of white floss. Eyes like slow-rolling gray-green eggs. When the old man shuffled up to me with puzzled, enthusiastic curiosity, I could smell on his breath something like cheese forgotten in the back of a refrigerator.

"Ah!" he chuckled. "Ah-ha! I see!"

Saharasla clunked and bumped in a circle about me. That distant, listless gaze bounced about every bit of my body. He would stop and lean into his staff, wobbling, every few seconds. Little noises of keen interest gurgled in his throat.

Who _is _this guy? I wondered. It wasn't until later that day that I finally remembered why his name rang a bell.

Meanwhile: The King watched the old man's progress with passive intensity. The Princess looked ready to mutiny. General Eldridge seemed ready to join her. Sir Perun and the Prime Minister shared looks of similar consternation. The shorter handmaiden stared with bemused embarrassment; her taller compatriot stood as neutral and enigmatic as a sphinx.

From behind me came the Sage's quavering voice: "And where do you hail from, son? Those are the – heheheh! – _strangest _ears I've ever seen!"

Fucking . . . _what_? Is this guy screwing with me?

Despite the irritation prickling up my spine, I gave the High Sage a very, very brief version of my origin story. As I did, impatient mutters seeped from onlookers.

Saharasla craned his stooped neck to look me in the eye. His own eyeballs spun in their sockets. He asked, "You say that you are the Hero of Legend? He who will free Hyrule from the bondage of the Old Darkness?"

I sniffed at the weird funk rising from the shriveled ape of a man. Go big or go home, Linus.

"Yes," I finally said.

"Mmm! Very fine! Very fine indeed," the High Sage hummed. "What did you say your name was, lad?"

Someone actually groaned aloud. I suddenly felt like I had been secretly shuffled from the royal audience and into a particularly tasteless sideshow.

When I told the old man my name, he squeaked with delight. "Linus!" he gawped. "Linus, Linus, Linus _Olsen_. Ohl-_sin_. Old son? _Lie_ . . . nuss!"

Saharasla cackled with a mouth stretched so wide that I saw the pinkish bulb of his uvula. Though I believed that I weathered this pretty well, I was later told that I looked like I might scream, throw up, or do both at once.

"I see, I see!" Saharasla laughed. His eyes and mustache danced. "Times of prophecy come at last, have they? Ganon on the march. Grim tidings from the hill countries. Forbidden sorceries practiced once more. Unspeakable demons summoned from beyond the veil. Signs and portents among the stars!"

His voice rose. It fell several octaves and rushed out in a warbling cacophony. With a tremoring hand, he thrust out his walking stick as if in challenge.

"The sky speaks – but do you listen? NO!

"Redead cry out from their barrows – but do you fear? NO!

"The beasts of legend return from their exile – but do you stir? NO!

"The cruciform of Armos rises again – but do you prepare? NO!

"Ganon himself is returned – but do you _believe_? OF COURSE NOT!"

A doomsayer's litany, directed not at me, but the assembled noblemen of the Council. They had fallen silent, now staring with peevish abashment at the raving High Sage.

"For you are fools!" Saharasla roared. "And as fools you shall perish beneath the heels of Ganon's lieutenants! That is . . . unless . . ." and his voice abruptly softened, falling into a meek whisper, ". . . _all_ prophecies be true.

"Linus, lad," the High Sage muttered. "Have you found the Temple Sword as of yet? The weapon of darshan? The Master of All Swords?"

"Y-yeah," I managed.

"Is that so?" he whistled.

"Uh . . . yes?" I flipped a hesitant hand in the direction of the King, half-expecting another diplomatic snafu to erupt as a result.

Goddammit – the old man didn't even glance back. His gaze was an eternally roving thing, and yet he didn't even take the moment to turn his head. Instead, he shoved the gnarled top of his walking staff under my nose and clucked, "Ah, but no man but the Hero may pull the Master Sword from its resting place!"

"Which . . . I . . . did?"

The skin of Saharasla's face stretched so taut he looked like a living mummy. His grin was superbly manic. "Oooh, did you, now? Joyous day!" Good God, he _still _wouldn't look at the thing. Instead, he did a bizarre little foot-dance and declared, "I am _very _excited, young man! You have no idea! Only one thing remains: your mark. Give me – eh – just a moment." He slid about me again, blinking in confusion. "Now, where . . .? Ah. Ahahaha!"

I shuddered as loose, feverish skin met my arm. Wizened fingers like chicken bones played over my flesh. Another spattering of pigeon-like noises as the Sage leaned in and all but pressed his blunt nose to the three black triangles.

Oh please please please let this demented bastard be as ignorant about tattoos as the rest of these people. I realized that I was holding my breath. If the rippling quiet of the chamber was any indication, so was everyone else.

Saharasla's rough fingernails traced a spiral out from the center of the ink Triforce. He tapped its vertices and goggled at its razor edges.

"Mmm . . . fascinating," he whispered. "Quite a pick, o goddesses. Quite a find."

Finally, the High Sage stepped back. He blinked big, papery eyelids and coughed hesitantly. With his free hand, he rubbed his jutting chin. There was a sudden lucidity to the old man that was quite unnerving.

With a grin and a swagger, the High Sage spun about and addressed the entire chamber. "There can be no doubt!" Saharasla shouted. "This man is chosen by the heavens themselves! His mark is divine. His origins? Though strange, quite humble! And his weapon?" The staff went horizontal in a heartbeat, pointing at the sword stowed on the King's lap. "It can be none other than the Temple Sword! The Master of All Swords that can be wielded by but _one man_!"

Saharasla hummed, "Good lords and ladies . . . I do believe that – unless the heavens play petty tricks upon us – that this fellow is none other than the Hero. A savior appointed by the divine powers in this, our time of need!"

As a startled susurrus began to swirl about the chamber, Saharasla tilted his head back to me and said, "I would say that you have interesting times ahead of you, my lad!" He winked grotesquely.

At last, the old man settled back in on himself. He looked about with smug satisfaction at the increasingly unhinged reaction to his announcement. I felt something clench and unclench spasmodically within me. Part of me still wanted to know whether this was a victory or a defeat.

The King soon calmed the jabbering audience members. "Many thanks to you, old teacher," he said quietly. "Please, sit. Your words mean much to this assembly."

"As they must, young Daphnes!" Saharasla laughed. "After all, I _am _the most learned man here, am I not? Why, even High Sage Spiros cannot know as much as I do about the lost legends of the Triforce!"

I couldn't help but notice the peculiar sadness nipping at Harkinian's features as High Sage Saharasla shuffled back to his dais-side seat. A hint of nostalgia and, perhaps, loss.

They allowed me to sit (again) and put my clothes back on. Meanwhile, the entire royal entourage (save the Princess, who increasingly looked like a bored little girl at Bring Your Daughter to Work Day) huddled about the King's throne. A bristling conversation sotto voce. The King motionless but for the creasing and rippling contours of his face. They disbanded at last as I was working the cumbersome buttons of my vest.

One last time, Sir Perun shouted my name and bid me stand for recognition. At least I got to keep my shirt on this time.

"Linus Olsen," King Harkinian pronounced. "We of the Court and Council have heard many strange and confusing tales this day. These are truly unprecedented times for Hyrule . . . and you are surely an unprecedented man.

"But are you the Hero?

"For all the extraordinary events surrounding you, and despite the endorsement of our most revered scholar of history . . . your claim remains unclear. In the words of Alchemist Shad, there is an undeniable truth: This is too important a thing – and its details too ambiguous – for us to rush into judgment. You yourself, Mister Olsen, appear uncertain."

Well, he's got me pegged, I thought miserably.

"I fear that a single morning's testimony will not be enough for us to come to enlightenment," the King grumbled melancholically. "Therefore, I declare that Linus Olsen's claim to the title of Hero of the Triforce remains an open issue."

An uneven, lethargic burst of protests sprayed from the Council. The King grimaced – finally tired of this shit – and held up a rough hand.

"The issue, friends and members of my Council, clearly remains open for debate. I hereby end this audience, as is my right as King. In turn, there will be a formal session of the Council of Lords tomorrow, at nine strikes of the morning bell."

Groans; exasperated entreaties; low oaths. None mattered – the resignation in the nobles' faces was palpable. I myself felt my heart flutter madly, as if the organ still didn't get that the audience had ended on an anticlimax.

"Linus Olsen!"

I snapped to attention. King Harkinian gazed out at me with ardent, inscrutable determination.

"Mister Olsen," he said evenly. "You may reclaim this sword. Only time – and your actions – will tell us whether it is, in fact, _your _sword."

Harkinian slid the Master Sword into the waiting hands of Sir Perun, who in turn crossed the room to where I sat. A hush followed his footsteps. When the High Herald placed the blade in my sweaty grip, he did so with an expression both grave and gracious. I swallowed dryly and balanced the cool weight of the sword over my arms. It was difficult to find any reassurance in its usually unyielding beneficence.

With that final piece of pageantry over with, the King thundered, "In the interval, I hereby decree that Linus Olsen will remain on the grounds of the Imperial Palace. He shall be accorded my hospitality and protection for the duration of this inquiry."

It's hard to approximate how I felt about that sudden, unexpected decree. Imagine stark, testicle-shrinking terror mixed liberally with almost manic excitement and you'll be in the right neighborhood. I couldn't decide whether to leap up pumping my fist or to curl into a ball on the floor, moaning.

King Harkinian turned to his right and gestured broadly. I thought for a moment that he was addressing his daughter. Not so:

"Maid Imzadi – please select empty quarters in the Guest Wing and show this man to them. See to it that he is settled comfortably. For the time being, you will attend to his needs."

The face of the handmaiden with violet eyes twitched visibly. Barely a nanosecond of hesitation. She placed her palms together, bowed at the waist, and said, "Yes, your majesty. I serve at your pleasure."

Her voice was full, smooth, and smoky. The sort of voice I'd attribute to a singer in a dimly lit cabaret.

Princess Ilia's eyes wrenched open. Her hands balled into fists. The girl's face twitched with what I first thought was anger, but quickly devolved into something like despair. She honestly looked like she was going to burst into tears.

At last (though the whole audience couldn't have lasted more than two-and-a-half hours), King Harkinian formally dismissed his Court and Council. He asked the gathered lords to retire to their lodgings and consider all possible lines of inquiry regarding the Hero. He also entreated his vassals to refrain from bothering him for the rest of the day. After all, he had a lot of thinking to do.

When Harkinian rose, we again took to our knees. Fingertip Triforces slipped through the warm and dusty air. As I took to my feet, King Harkinian's back was already receding beyond the soldier-carved doors.

My fate was left dangling in his wake.


	31. 31

**31**

Compared to our initial seating, the dispersal of the audience was completely informal. Men and women of the Council took their sweet time rising, stretching, and conversing in low, intense tones. The flick of eyes in my direction became a swarm. None approached me. Most seemed to actively avoid Tash and I as they moved about the chamber – as if I now exuded a bubble of toxic gas.

I noticed that the tall handmaiden (_Imzadi, _I thought) now knelt beside the Princess's throne. Though Ilia Harkinian still appeared distraught, she listened intently as the maiden whispered. Slow, gentle words. There grew in the Princess's features an approximation of solidity – perhaps even stoicism. Some odd reflection of her father's internal steel. Ilia nodded determinedly and then shot me a hateful glance. She too rose from her throne and limped, sniffing, from the room.

Beside me, Tash Lon lumbered from his chair. His face was the same color as the cheese he peddled. "Well . . . _that _was interestin'," he stage-whispered.

"Yeah," I said absently. Most of me still hadn't caught up to the fact that I wouldn't actually be leaving the palace.

The compact, bristly lord that had been sitting closest to the exit appeared suddenly beside me. A long-browed examination ensued. Top hat askew.

With a voice like a grain thresher, he said, "Nayru protect you, sir." He tipped his hat and careened out through the door.

"Ain't ever seen Lord Eldin that flummoxed," Tash marveled.

"Hockey-puck there is the Lord of Eldin Province?" I wheezed laughter. "Huh."

Tash nodded as though he weren't really following what I was saying. His gaze seemed distant; trying to take hold of some wild point only he could see. He kept looking at me, growing an expression of consternation, and whipping his eyes out as if in search of a better exit.

"Linus . . ." he finally said. Whatever confusion had twisted his face now melted into unmasked sadness. When Tash attempted a smile, it had pained edge. "It's been a fine thing knowin' ya', lad."

"Christ, Tash. You talk like they're about to execute me." Though the rancher still looked miserable, I patted him on the shoulder and gave him a grin. "You'll see me again soon, man. I'll make sure of it."

Tash mumbled, "I dunno, lad . . . dunno. Good news or no come the end o' these bloody audiences an' exams an' chin-wags, I suspect that they'll be keepin' hold o' ya'. A _close _hold." He shook his head and stopped trying to smile.

"Mister Olsen."

I turned and found the tall handmaiden gazing at me levelly. She steepled her hands before her, fingers pressed together. The maid's hands were so white that I thought her some kind of albino; then I realized that she actually wore dainty, elbow-length gloves.

"I would greatly appreciate it if you were to follow me now," Imzadi said. "I am ordered to show you to your quarters."

I had to fight to find my voice. Up close, those dark purple eyes of hers were just short of startling. "One second," I said hoarsely.

"As quickly as possible, Mister Olsen."

When Tash extended his hand to me, I growled, "Aw, none of that, man. C'mere." I wrapped my arms about his shoulders in a reenactment of the embrace he'd given me so freely in Oloro Town.

With that, Lord Tashiel Lon bowed to the handmaiden, flashed me a hopeless grin, and sashayed out of the audience chamber. Another moment locked securely in the amber of my memory: His chubby, spry silhouette as it passed from light into outer gloom. His cheerful, shouted, "GOOD LUCK TO YA', LAD! GOOD LUCK!"

And then he was gone.

I returned to the handmaiden, who waited with silent, patient poise. All about us, nobles moved through our periphery to slip out the waiting doors. A danger zone – broaching no entry – surrounded me for at least three yards. Eyeballs still slid my way in faux-furtive glimpses. Their aversion was probably not out of horror or distaste, but by confusion and initial distrust. I hoped.

Some were less ambiguous.

Shad nodded to me soberly as our eyes met. A slight smirk pulled at the edges of his lips.

The man in red armor stared at me with open suspicion, as if expecting me to pull out a gun and start cappin' mafuckas.

Saharasla, newly risen and navigating his way stumpily through the crowd, caught my gaze and winked.

"Mister Olsen, if you will: Please follow me."

I just nodded and fell in as the tall handmaiden turned and set to walking. Legionaries pivoted at our approach. We proceeded opposite of the rest of the audience members – through the hero-graven doors that the King and Princess had used. Into a bizarro twin of the antechamber I had entered through. Only guards and a few stoic-looking palace servants remained here. Most watched us from flame-lit shadows.

We passed out of the gloom-ridden chambers and into another of those insensate corridors running through the body of the keep. Long knives of light cut from the windows and sliced gently across the opposite wall. It seemed like our feet were awfully loud here. Booming boot-strikes from column to arch.

Ahead, Imzadi kept a voracious pace. Her cloak and skirts undulated together with a liquid swishing sound. She trailed a curious scent – something like silk and fresh ginger.

Through a side door, I suddenly found myself on the open-air edge of a small inner courtyard. Fresh, humid air fell over us. Fragrances of grass and wet flagstones. We followed an inner cloister about the perimeter of this hidden garden, toward another door back into the central keep.

The sudden sun and bracing blue of the sky woke me from the unthinking trance I had been in since watching Tash Lon leave. I blinked at the rippling lavender of Imzadi's cloak and the vague hints of limbs as they pumped beneath it.

"So . . ." I coughed, "Imzadi, huh? That a Shiekah name?"

She didn't say a word for some moments. Then: "Yes. It is."

"Cool," I muttered. "Cool."

"By my estimation," the maiden said flatly, "it is actually quite warm out."

"No – I meant – I mean –" God, this was going to give me a fucking headache. "Never mind."

"Certainly."

Thereafter, only bootfalls and birdsong between us. From beyond the courtyard, a legionary's hale, disembodied voice called out an unseen watch change.

We entered another section of stone building. Here were smaller, more intimate passages. Weathered statues – busts and torsos, mostly – were set in niches along the walls. Tapestries and large watercolor paintings swept by in flashes of color. A stylized dragon here; a snarling moblin there. Heroes everywhere.

One tall, vivid painting slowed my step. I eventually came to a stop before it, studying the figures within.

On a gray-yellow field stood a man and a woman. One quite tall; one quite short. Both blonde – he with hints of sand; she, with golden curls. She wore an intricate green dress; he, full plate armor of gray and gold. He wore a familiar circlet about his forehead; she bore a jeweled half-veil. As she smiled enigmatically, he glowered with silent intensity.

Well, it was pretty clear which one the man was. You couldn't mistake that height and lantern jaw.

"I can tell that that's the King . . ." I said, pointing out his portrait, ". . . but who is that? The Queen?" My finger swept to the tiny, demure woman at his side.

The handmaiden studied the portrait impassively. She said, "Yes. Queen Saria Harkinian. Consort of the High King and mother of the Crown Princess."

A pair of maids in plain habits crossed our hallway. A cloud of giggles and whispers. They didn't seem to notice that we were even there.

"Is she . . .?" I asked hesitantly.

"Dead?" the handmaiden said. "Yes. She passed after giving birth to Princess Ilia. A truly sad day for our kingdom. She was a gentle soul. An inspiration to all of us."

Imzadi cocked an eyebrow, as if awaiting more questions. Instead, I just scratched at my hair and murmured, "Damn."

The tall maid led me out of the central keep and down a short flight of stairs. Our feet crunched onto a gravel path. We wound through glowingly maintained lawns. From between curtain walls we emerged into a place of hedges, flowerbeds, and looming statuary.

High noon over the courtyards and steaming gardens:

Hot, fine, quick, and clear. A slight haze clung to the treetops. Covered paths, walkways, and porticos spider-webbed the spaces between buildings. Jade-green grass still shone wetly from the morning fog. Circles, rhombuses, and stars of flowers spread in the middles of lawns. In beautifully designed stone enclosures there rose orchards of astonishing trees. Glossy fruit hung in globes and teardrops from immense canopies. Everywhere there lingered the sharp, sap-sticky scent of eucalyptus.

Handmaiden Imzadi chanced a quick glance back to make sure I was still following her. I kept close as we traversed the path through the lush palace grounds.

All about the courtyards, palace workers tried to look like they were going about their daily business. Gardeners attempted to maintain hedgerows. Bricklayers pretended that they were surveying for repairs. Cooks' assistants acted like they were hurrying from quarters to kitchen. Legionary soldiers played it casual as they marched their patrol routes.

What they all were actually doing was trying to glimpse of us. Well, _me_, I guess. When they thought I wasn't looking, workers outright chattered and stared. A lot of laughter, I noticed. When they saw us crossing over the footpath, it was all they could do not to point and straight up lose their shit.

Feeling uncomfortable under yet another mass barrage of eyeballings, I made the mistake of trying to start another conversation with Imzadi.

I piped up, "Um – hey. So, are you, like, always who they send out with guests? This your usual gig?"

Another pregnant pause. With the woman turned away from me, I had no idea how she was taking my new badgering. At last: "I am usually chief handmaiden and attendant to the Crown Princess."

"Huh!" I ejected. "That must be a barrel of laughs."

"It is a great honor and a privilege. A joy, truthfully. Princess Ilia is like a sister to me."

Oh, _wow_. My foot sure tastes awful today.

I choked back an oath and fumbled about for a diplomatic response. My lips formed the first word more than a couple times.

A smoke-colored blur zipped through the bushes next to the path. Yellow eyes blinked at our approach. The gray ghost resolved itself between branches into a big, hunched-shouldered cat. It languorously flicked a long tail tipped with a tuft of white. Sharp, high-slung ears gave it the look of a bobcat or lynx. Its hindquarters wiggled expectantly.

Suddenly, a second cat appeared through a hedge wall. It leapt with springy grace and tackled the first. The animals spun and tumbled from view amid delighted chirps.

"In all fairness, she can be a difficult child." Imzadi's volunteered words almost startled me. "But you must not let your first impression cloud your opinion of her. She has had a hard life despite his majesty's indulgences."

Across an intervening lawn, a boy wearing a heavy leather apron gawped at us openly. I really wished that I had remembered my cap.

"You will find her a more complicated and soulful young lady than her . . . _tantrums_ . . . would suggest."

Though I nodded, I could barely countenance this. Really? That peevish little shit I saw during the audience? Pull the other one.

I saw now that the handmaiden was leading me toward a long, low annex building. Its roof ran with an intricate spine of rib-like arches. The land fell down a slight hill toward it, creating a small pseudo-basin that wrapped about its perimeter. In this earthen cleft grew a thick, fantastic copse of shade trees. Stone walkways and iron benches were scattered about this secret, arboreal park.

As we stepped onto one of these walkways and then up a stairway leading to the annex, Imzadi declared, "The Guest Wing." As flat and curt as a pre-recorded tour guide.

A heavy door opened into an inner corridor so dark it like we had passed into night. Candlelight pulsed from glass globes near the ceiling. A soft gloom, like glowing fog, suffused the air. A mild mustiness seeped from the stonework.

"Quite a blunder you made today."

Her voice echoed about me as if from the depths of a well.

I blinked. Dim shadows crawled across the floor. "What?"

"I said that you made quite the mistake at the audience," she murmured icily, never once looking back.

I made a sound that wasn't quite a groan and wasn't quite a fatalistic chuckle. "Ha, really?" I said. "Which one was that?"

The maid said, "Misnaming the Princess. Speaking out of turn, as well. But calling her a name you 'heard in a dream?' Feh." She clucked her tongue. "Quite an . . . _odd_ outburst."

We continued to walk through the silent, empty corridors of the Guest Wing – perhaps more slowly now. Closed doors passed on either side of the hallway. I was pretty sure that Imzadi's pace had flattened out. Not so hurried now. Not so pressed.

"Yeah," I muttered. "You could say that again."

"Did you really dream about a 'Princess Zelda'?"

This was quickly getting too awkward to bear. "Sure," I said. "Not that it turned out to mean anything. Should've just kept my mouth shut instead of trying to show off."

"Indeed."

A quick turn at a junction. Jesus: Another maze.

I sniffed and smelled candle wax. A skittering caterpillar of tension twisted its way up my neck.

I groused, "Still think it was a little overboard. How everybody reacted, I mean."

"Such a strange coincidence. . ." the handmaiden whispered. It was a distant, unsure phrase. A wistful vein through the white smoke of her voice.

Man, was she even going to listen to me?

"After all . . ." Imzadi said.

She stopped in the middle of the corridor. Impenetrable layers of cloth flowed as she pivoted on her heel. A thin eyebrow arched like living gold. Skin like quartz. Her eyes were strange, spectral nebulae. Uncanny fire shining from an unknowable void.

"_My _name is Zelda."

I stared.

"Handmaiden Zelda al-Imzadi," she continued wryly, "at your service. It appears that I will be your chief attendant during your stay in the palace."

I stared.

"You look as if you've seen a poe, sir." She grew a grim smile. I couldn't help but notice (weirdly) that one of her upper canines was whiter than the rest of her teeth. "Pray tell: have we met before? You were awfully familiar with my name during your audience."

I stared and felt like I might start gibbering.

Her joyless grin vanished. Once more she wore a veil of indifference. "Nothing to say?" she rasped. "Does the fulfillment of your prophetic dreams bother you so? Am _I, _in fact, the one you dreamed of?"

Aw, fuck. Aw, fucking _fuck_.

I had no idea how to react to this. No idea whatsoever.

Well, at least say _something_, you dipshit.

My mouth made a perfect "O," then attempted to form a word. Any word. I ended up with: "I, I d-don't r-really . . . know."

Bravo! Stellar. What an orator.

She pressed those satin gloves together and favored me with a flat, slit-eyed gaze. "No, I suppose not," she said. "Not when you cannot distinguish between dreams and absolute future-sight. And I highly doubt that it was _me _you dreamed of. Zelda is a common-enough name. And certainly, none are princesses."

And then she stepped down the hallway, her resonating footfalls much quieter than mine.

I followed this woman – _Zelda_! – like a duckling. Wobbling, erratic, uncertain.

Suddenly, it all made sense. At least, as much as a world gone mad _could _make sense. This was why my faux pas had caused the Princess to react with such ghastly revulsion. For all everyone in that room had known, I had mixed up the heir to the throne with a lowly servant.

Christ. I might as well have called the King "His Dudeness" for good measure.

But . . . but but oh-shit-on-toast . . . _but_.

There were no coincidences here. As wrong as I had constantly been about the culture and politics of Hyrule, it was impossible to ignore the things I _had _known. Names, for instance – and the faces that belonged to them. How odd that the old characters seemed to line up with their fleshy doppelgangers. The sense of déjà vu from their appearance rumbled like an after-roar behind every thought.

Now: A woman called Zelda. In a world that was built in that name's shadow. Just a servant – a _maid_. A human ice sculpture. Zelda. No fucking coincidences.

_None are princesses_.

But what did it _mean_?

"This is it."

I snapped out of it clumsily. We stood before another of the nondescript doors that lined the entire Guest Wing. The handmaiden (hahaha) pulled an elaborate black keychain from within the lustrous folds of her cloak. She held it upright and regarded me with stern distrust.

"This will be your residence until the King releases you from the Imperial Palace," Zelda announced.

Before the Princ – maid maid _maid_ – could continue, I blurted, "Hey, I left some stuff back at the Lon place –"

With a dismissive tilt of the head, the handmaiden said, "I will send for your belongings and see to it that they are brought to your quarters. Now: Welcome to your new home."

The way she said that last sentence made my flesh want to crawl off my bones.

Zelda unlocked the door and led me into the appointed chamber. It was, more or less, a rather modest apartment. Two rooms: a sitting room-cum-study and a smallish bedroom. In the sitting room, tall arched windows looked out over the tree-filled garden flanking the Guest Wing.

The quarters were appointed with the following: An overstuffed armchair the color of sour apples; one circular table, which had seen better days; two mundane chairs; a desk with empty slots for storing quills and inkpot; a blunt bookcase; exactly four books on said bookcase; a painted metal wash basin; a chamber pot; one glass oil lamp per room; and, finally, an incongruously luxuriant four-poster bed.

The chambers smelled of wood varnish, beeswax, and a fancier kind of dust than what I was used to. A respectable decrepitude.

Zelda crossed the sitting room over a blue and white rug. Beneath it laid panels of polished wood. She stopped and idled next to the scuffed table. One of her long fingers snaked out and rubbed across the edge of a chair.

"As I said," Zelda laid out, "this is, until time or fate sees us separated, your home. Here and here alone will you quarter.

"You will be provided three meals per day at the usual hours. You will be expected to attend all audiences and occasions where your presence is requested." Her gaze was like nightfall in deep winter. "Until further notice, we request that you do not leave the confines of the Guest Wing. As such, it would be advisable to remain in these quarters until told otherwise."

Well, that wasn't dreadful or ominous _at all_. No sir.

In the center of the table sat a small wooden tray, which I now noticed was occupied by a pair of egg-sized bells. Zelda scooped one up and presented it.

"If you are in dire need of anything, ring this bell."

"Are you going to be nearby?"

She shook her head. "Not always. While not tending directly to you, I will need to perform other duties as they present themselves. That will take me over the breadth of the palace."

I felt my forehead screw up. "How will you hear me?"

Zelda gingerly handed me the bell. The silver surface was smooth and cool. She nodded toward it and I gave it a cautious flick of the wrist. Its music was toneless and medium-loud. What gave it resonance was an identical chime – tinkling from the bell still on the tray.

I let off a single clipped laugh and tried it again. As I rang my bell, the other toned in the exact same manner.

"I see!" I grinned. "That's rad. Magic, right?"

She outright rolled her eyes. "Yes, that is part of it," Zelda said. "It is apparently a basic alchemy – but quite useful. Legionary mages use a variation of it to send simple messages on the front lines."

My fist closed over the bell and a final muttery _plink _emitted from its sibling. "Huh. That's cool."

"That word again." She shook her head. "Do you have any questions?"

It was a struggle to form coherent thoughts, much less the incisive ones I needed at that moment. The first question that actually popped into my head was, "What's for lunch?"

Argh.

"I shall have a noon meal brought to you shortly. Your possessions should arrive in a few hours. Anything else?"

I licked my lips, closed my eyes, and counted to five. C'mon. Think. Focus.

Thus: "What happens now?"

"You wait."

"Wait?"

"Wait," Zelda said decisively.

I blinked, more confused than irritated. "For what?"

"For his majesty the High King to decide your fate." That thin, joyless smile flashed. "He will determine whether you are friend or foe. Hero or villain. Only then will we know what our people's future holds." An eyebrow arced like a bullwhip. "Unless, of course, _you _can tell us what it holds. That may be useful."

I huffed, "Har har. Awesome. You know – the High Sage sure seemed to be in my camp today. Kind of smart man, huh? Shouldn't you believe what he has to say?"

Zelda snatched the bell from the tabletop and stuffed it into some hidden pocket in her dress. "High Sage Minos was once a wise and temperate man. The King's most trusted confidante next to the Prime Minister." Her shoulders rose in what might have been a shrug. "He has not been any of those things in some years. You yourself saw his condition. While he may still bear the learned touch of Farore in his clearer moments, I would not put much hope in his testimony."

Well, that much made sense. It had been like being appraised by a street preacher.

I asked, "How long will it take, then? Shouldn't they at least ask me a few more questions? Run a few more tests? Weigh the fuckin' evidence?"

"That is exactly what I suspect they will do, Mister Olsen."

"What about you?"

"What about me?" she said testily.

"Are you, like, my babysitter for now? Making sure I stay in my room and don't make a ruckus?"

I winced inwardly at the childish edge to my question. In defense of my sudden petulance, I have to admit that I still wasn't fully in control of my words. "Stoned" would be a good way to describe me, even if I were actually distressingly sober. I experienced everything a half-second after it had already happened. It was quite frustrating.

Thankfully, Zelda took it in stride. She said, "As your attendant, I will respond as quickly and thoroughly as possible to your needs. Though I am happy to serve at all hours, I request that you do not abuse the privilege of the bell. Bear in mind that I shall check in on you at regular intervals.

"In the meantime, please remain here and busy yourself as you see fit. I have no doubt that you shall be summoned to headier activities sooner rather than later."

I found myself whining, "Do I really need to stay here? I promise I won't get into any trouble."

Those hardened lips. That crystalline gaze. The handmaiden said, "The King commands. I insist."

Fuck!

"As you wish, _princess_," I muttered.

Something hot and murderous ignited through her features. When Zelda next spoke, it was with slow and stilted precision. "Do not call me that. It is unbelievably disrespectful to the title and its holder. _My charge_. Do you understand?"

I nodded sullenly. Geez. Lighten the fuck up.

"Sorry," I puffed. Try as I might, I couldn't hold her eyes. A little too intense for me in those jelly-kneed moments.

After a beat of edgy, unpleasant quiet, Zelda al-Imzadi sighed, "That will do, then. Your meal shall arrive shortly. I shall make all the proper arrangements for your stay. Until the next we meet," the handmaiden glowered darkly, "please be on your best behavior."

With a final piercing glance, Zelda left the room like a violet wraith.

That left me . . . well, nothing, really. I paced apprehensively from room to room for a few minutes, taking in all the amenities that I had already surveyed. Once, twice, three times I bent and examined the indecipherable Hylian titles on the spines of books. My heart was pumping so hard I could feel the force in my wrists and neck. I couldn't sit still.

I forced myself into the easy chair and tried to focus on the small details of the room. The dull patterns of the rugs as they brooded on the floor. Abrasions on the surface of the table. Decorative designs unspooling about the glass surface of the nearest lamp.

Things were moving so fast. So painfully fast.

Zelda.

No, fuck that. That did not just happen.

_Zelda_.

My eyeballs ached. The weight of the scabbard against my thigh was monstrous.

Suddenly, I needed a hit of reefer worse than I had in the entirety of my life. This frightened me. A sensation compounding all others.

Was this it? How it felt when you got so dependent on weed that any stress triggered a jones? Had I been self-medicating anxiety and pain and fear for so long that any crisis – no matter how small – made me crawl into a pipe stem?

Another panic attack, then. Just like Oloro. Is that it, Linus? Are you going to go bugfuck every time something a little weird goes down? Because, haha, _motherfucker_, I got news for you.

Calm down calm down calm down. It's just another Video Game Coincidence. A freakish loop-de-loop of fate. The peasant is now a princess and the princess is now a servant. Great joke, huh?

But what did it mean? What could it possibly mean?

_Calm down_!

Okay. I forced myself to close my eyes and breathe deep. Breathe. Just breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe, motherfucker. Breathe.

I settled into the lumpy contours of the easy chair. A sensation of draining – energy, questions, thought. A clearing of the board. An opportunity to reboot and reconsider.

Breathe.

I must have fallen asleep, because when next I opened my eyes the light slanted through the windows all wrong. A covered brass tray sat expectantly on the sitting room table. Once revealed, its offering of cheese, bread, and cold sausage went down with dutiful unenthusiasm.

The good news: Though I was still groggy, the nap and lunch seemed to help. I no longer felt Friend Panic tickling his talons over my skull. In its place was a vaguer, more manageable dread.

After walking the contours of the chambers, I tried the door and was somewhat surprised to find it unlocked. When I swept out into the passage, expecting guards or booby traps, I instead found it echoingly empty. No one jumped out to intercept me as I sauntered through the Wing's hallways.

Though it all looked the same to me, I managed to find my way out the same entrance we had come through. Outside, the afternoon shone bright and languid through the leaves of the shade garden. Another of those lynx-like cats pressed its back into the bark of a nearby tree trunk. Its tail swished contentedly.

Two legionaries in light armor stood at the base of the Guest Wing's steps. They turned and watched me warily from within their helmets.

I stretched, grunted, and cracked my knuckles.

I announced, "Wonderful fucking day!" and fled back inside.

It took some time – and several locked doors – to figure out which room was mine.

The sun fell. Shadows cast by the palace steeples stretched languidly over the grounds.

I tried reading. Well, "reading." I may as well have been a three-year-old, so far as the books leaning in my room were concerned. I thumbed through their thick pages and goggled at the typeset Hylian letters rambling within. Gibberish upon gobbledygook.

In what was inevitably some palace servant's idea of a joke, a thin volume turned out to be – for all intents and purposes – a comic book. Pictures were drawn in its pages, and from these figures spouted unmistakable word balloons. I puzzled over it for more than fifteen minutes, trying to stitch some semblance of a narrative from its babble-laden panels. When I realized that I had no idea whether a fair maiden was hatching from an egg or being trapped in it, I closed the pulpy cover and set it back on the bookshelf.

By nightfall, I was halfway out of my mind with worry and boredom. I kept glancing at the bell that, when rung, would summon my erstwhile Zelda. Each look was followed by the realization that it would do no good – it wasn't as if I could just use her as room service.

Yeah, hey. Good to see you. Could you send up a couple bottles of beer and some pornography? That's swell. Sorry if I don't tip.

So: I lit the lamps with unsure hands and watched the sky go necrotic.

When a knock did resound through the rooms, I almost leapt out of my skin. I pulled open the door to find a maid much shorter and darker of complexion than Zelda. She wore informal, utilitarian clothes and gazed up at me with fierce brown eyes. In one hand she balanced a covered tray; in the other hung my duffle bag.

"Yer dinner n' effects, sir," she declared.

With neither deference nor condescension, the maid scurried into the chambers, set her load on the table, and gathered up the remains of my lunch. She nodded tersely and bid me good night.

I hadn't even had time to ask her name.

As I sat down to dinner, I watched the Imperial Palace bloom into a different sort of life. Lantern and candlelight flickered ochre through leaded glass. About the grounds, lamp poles burst into rough yellow brilliance. Small armies of servants, dignitaries, bureaucrats, and soldiers tromped the garden pathways. Distant laughter and shouting seeped through the sitting room windows.

Meal for one: Baked cuccoo, greens, and stewed tubers almost like yams. Compared to the other fare I'd eaten in Hyrule, this was close to prison food.

_That _was a glum thought. It stopped my fork halfway to its destination.

The food had come with a cup and clay jug about the size of a softball. Wine the color of the sun came pouring out. Fragrant, tangy stuff. I guzzled all of it and looked at the bell again and listened to movement out in the halls of the Guest Wing. Not enough there to get me drunk, but at least it was better than the bland food.

Little else was left to me. Insect songs guided me as I rummaged through my stuff. I pawed through the leather purse and found all my Hylian money in order. All possessions accounted for.

I looked up at the greasy plate sitting on the edge of the table and the silver object beside it. The bell. Ring it. Ask her what the shit is taking so long.

It took only the memory of those shadow-drenched eyes for my nerves to fail.

I decided to wait. Soon, I thought. They'll call on you soon. You just need to be patient.

Zelda did not return that night. Not even another handmaiden checked in on me. Eventually, I submitted to the fell exhaustion clawing at my head and limbs. I blew out the lamps and turned down the covers of my huge bed by moonlight.

In the echoing depths of the night, the Imperial Palace murmured like a far-off city.

I lay there and tried to pull it all together – to comprehend it – to figure out everything that had happened that day. It was fruitless. A dozen-dozen voices, stories, sights, and secrets clashed through my head.

Instead, I thought about Malora. About her smile – gentle, delighted, impish. About the confidence of her kiss. About the laconic wave she had given me that morning as I headed out of the house.

What had Tash told her about my new living arrangements? Would I be able to see her sooner or later? Ever again, even?

Did I want to?

Of course I did. Stupid question.

Is it? the Other Me mulled grotesquely.

Fucking hell. What had I allowed myself to fall into? What strange crops had I sewn?

And there was _her_.

Zelda.

When I tried to consider her, it was like thinking about death. The mind shied away suddenly. It was too much, too soon, too quickly. Nothing mystified me like that woman. The battered center of my brain had simply not had enough to time to process her.

Shit, I thought. What in God's name is going on here?

Slowly, grudgingly, I drifted off to sleep.

By the next morning, everything had already gone to hell.


	32. 32

**32**

"Wake up."

"Fwuh?"

"You must rise."

A clatter of cutlery; a judder of porcelain.

"Nuh."

I rolled in fuzzy darkness, pulling warmth tight about my shoulders.

"Linus Olsen. It is imperative that you rise _now_. There is an emergency. You have been summoned."

It was easy to recognize the dusky, forceful voice. It had been on my mind when I climbed into bed. It had swum sinuous ember arcs through my dreams.

"Guh weh." My lips brushed starched pillow fabric. Tentatively: "Mergenceh?"

"Yes."

"Fug."

Lord, how it sucked to pull myself out of that bed. The light that poked at my eyes was feeble at best. Across the room, a lamp flared to life. It illuminated a figure looming grim as a stone monument.

Zelda al-Imzadi stared down at me, arms crossed and lips pursed. For about the thousandth (completely useless) time I wondered if I was still dreaming.

At whatever ungodly hour she had woken me, Zelda wore completely different clothes than the last time I had seen her. Her dress was drab but elegant and she was completely bereft of the cloak that had previously hidden her body. An indigo shawl tied down her hair and covered her forehead. The gloves that she still wore were elbow length, their white satin suddenly reminding me of hospitals rather than classy eveningwear.

Though the puffy hems of her dress made it far from skin-tight, I could now tell that Zelda was a tall, trim young woman. Probably around my age, though her smooth features seemed timeless. Hair the color of autumn wheat was tied in a tight braid, which fell to the small of her back. Her ears were of the lengthy, graceful Shiekah variety. She had severe cheekbones and a slightly jutting chin. Her movements were long and precise.

"What time is it?" I yawned.

There was movement behind me. Ceramic clacked on wood. I twisted my shoulder to see into the sitting room. Out there, the dark-haired girl who had delivered my supper the night before was setting dishes and flatware on the table. Two trays slid onto its surface. Invigorating smells of hot food wafted through the bedroom doorway.

When I turned back, Zelda was looking at a big brass pocket watch that she had apparently pulled from some clever nook in her dress. She inhaled and said, "It is roughly half past the sixth bell. Dawn, roundabouts. Time to rise, Mister Olsen."

I sat halfway out of bed, dressed only in boxers and my "Find Drunk Waldo" tee-shirt. When Zelda's gaze roved to the print of the titular character pissing into a lake, her brow screwed up in bewilderment.

"Hell," I hissed. "What's this . . . emergency thing?"

"You have been summoned by the King," Zelda said.

The brunette maid suddenly appeared at the door. She whispered, "Excuse me, Miss Imzadi. I'm done here."

Zelda nodded stiffly. "Thank you, Kira. You may return to your rounds."

"Kira" allowed her eyes to zip my way once, bowed, and then shuffled from the chambers.

I rubbed at one eye and said, "Well, fucking finally. You know I waited all day for them to get off the pot?"

"You do not understand, Mister Olsen," Zelda frowned. "This is not an audience, nor does it concern the status of your claim. I understand that this will actually be a meeting of sorts."

"About what?" I asked.

"Of that, I cannot say."

"You can't say or you won't say?"

She favored me with cold venom. If I had woken with morning wood (and thank God I hadn't), my junk would have shriveled like a deflating balloon-animal.

"More of the first than the second," Zelda admitted. "I understand that events transpired sometime in the night that have changed the mood of the palace. As I was woken only an hour ago, I have not been privy to anything but rumors."

I stood and stretched ritualistically. "And what _are_ the rumors?" I said.

She held her ground. "Nothing but the usual doomsaying. Most is nonsensical and contradictory. However, the word on every tongue is 'Ganon.'"

That was enough to stop me cold. It rattled my sleep-jarred brain into adrenal brilliance. Fuck, I thought. Not this again. Not now.

"As such," Zelda said, "you have been called to the King's presence. You have a half-hour until you are expected in the Tower of Sight. I suggest you dress, break your fast, and be ready to follow me in fifteen minutes."

"Fuck!" I growled.

She rolled her eyes and stepped out of the bedroom, fingers pressed together.

Time to tear open the duffle. What a goddamn mess. Soiled clothes mixed with new ones, rendering everything a thin kind of dirty. I sighed in mild exasperation. It _just now _hit me that I had forgotten the shirt Malora had gone to such trouble to have laundered in Oloro Town. A bloody waste.

With Los Angeles-born clothes out of the question, I donned the cleanest of my new tunics and the same dress pants I had worn to the audience. I pulled the green knit cap over my dome gratefully.

I also made sure to strap the Master Sword to my side. A vague sense of foreboding accompanied the gesture.

Zelda stared out into the graying dawn as I pulled open trays and dug into salty-sweet porridge, warm sausage tasting of anise, and buttery bread. Rather better food than the night before. The handmaiden said nothing, her gaze so distant that she didn't even seem to acknowledge my existence.

I washed the last bite of food down with a gulp of lukewarm tea and said, "All right. Let's get this shit on the road."

She seemed to wake, blinking slowly at me as I rose. A purple once-over, as if she were appraising furniture. A sigh spun low in her throat. Neck tendons outlined clearly beneath her skin.

"Please follow me, then," Zelda whispered.

I discovered the palace grounds choked with fog. A full, mossy redolence swam about the stone paths and wet lawns. Archways dripped and crystalline rills ran through the elaborate stonework. Though the sun had risen, it was a phantom eye glowering low in the east. Lamp-poles cast dirty phosphorescence through the murk.

The shrouded shapes of servants and palace guards raced to and fro like panicked ghosts. Some shouted near-incomprehensibly as they came and went. One baby-faced legionary sprinted past us like an antelope, his face a wreck of fear and anxiety. Two old women crossed over the lawns with expressions straight out of a Renaissance painting of a historical tragedy. Somewhere over Lake Hylia, a bell rang from the rooftops of the city.

The central keep and all its tessellated towers reared up before us. A grim shadow in the flowing gray-white of morning. It was here that a dark, diminutive blob detached from the shadowy lee of a statue. At the feet of a stone knight, a child's huge eyes materialized from beneath a heavy hood. Round cheeks almost the same color as the fog.

Princess Ilia Harkinian stared out at me dispassionately. She wore a strange white garment that was part cloak, part heavy poncho. Her thin arms slid from its folds and cradled a kitten with tufted fur and golden eyes. A youngling version of the lynx-creatures I had seen stalking the lawns. For whatever reason, the animal looked rather pleased with itself.

The Princess sniffed and declared, "I had heard that you were about. I wish to have a word with you before you enter."

"With me, you mean?" I blurted.

Ilia grimaced and spat, "Do you see? This is what I mean! You have absolutely no sense of decorum, sir. Not the wits to speak only in your right time."

I opened my mouth to make some kind of worthless apology, but the Princess continued, "Both of you, actually. I wish to have word with you both."

The kitten rubbed its head into the chest of Ilia's poncho and mewed.

Zelda stepped forward on the path and bent slightly. "My Princess . . ." she murmured. "You should not be awake and about in such hours. You know what missed sleep and poor vapors can do to you. I suggest you return to your chambers forthwith."

Ilia shook her head, but said softly, "Will you speak with me, Zelda?"

A mist-cooled sigh. "Yes."

The Princess of Hyrule swung around and stared hard into my sleep-bleary eyes. That ghost of iron from the day before yet lingered in her features.

"I do not like you, sir," she hissed. "You are crass, rude, and – worst of all – ignorant. You speak without knowing and act without judgment. Your actions are without respect, forethought, or tact. You blunder about as if you are blessed, but I see you as you are . . ."

"Ilia . . ." Zelda sighed.

". . . a bumbling brute who cannot possibly be the Hero of Hyrule's salvation!"

What the fuck? I had barely even hung around this kid. All this because I called her by her handmaiden's name?

"Do you have no response, sir? I challenge your name and honor!" the Princess barked.

This was one of those situations where should have just kept my mouth shut. Showing great wisdom and forbearance, I chuffed, "Princess . . . your majesty . . . right now, I don't really give a shit."

Zelda shot me a glare like a straight razor, but there was no energy in it. A kind of bloodless enervation hung over her face.

The Princess's pale cheeks burned red. "Ruffian!" Ilia shivered. "I so very wish that you weren't Father's favored man. I might find a way to teach you a lesson!"

Before I could gift her with another witty bon mot, Ilia slouched away from me and drew close to Zelda. The raised hackles of her body language melted away completely. Now, there just stood a sad, scared-looking adolescent girl. Her caretaker looked down on her with arms crossed and brow pensive.

Softly: "Will you return soon, Zelda? I already miss our embroidery lessons."

"I know not, child."

Ilia snorted and stomped her foot. "It's not fair! I shall tell Father to send you back to me forthwith!"

"Princess," Zelda murmured, "I already spoke to the King on that very subject last night."

The Princess's eyes grew very big. Her fidgety movements stilled. Though she made a dismayed noise low in her throat, Ilia said nothing.

I myself felt my chest shrink. Zelda had asked to be rid of me? Already?

Zelda placed a hand on her charge's shoulder and said, "His majesty wishes me to look after Mister Olsen as I usually look after you. It is the King's command that I remain in Olsen's service until we know more about him." Though the handmaiden's voice was probably supposed to be soothing, she came off so sadly that it was nothing of the sort.

"Will you be long?" Ilia asked quietly. "I do so miss you during your pilgrimages. I hate to think that you will be any longer this time."

"I truly do not know, Princess. If all goes well, no more than a few days." Zelda tried a gentle smile, but there was an edge of tension in it. "Worry not – I will still be in the palace. If you truly need my assistance, I am sure that I will be able to give it to you. You have Maid Kiltain in the meantime."

"Daia is fine," Ilia said, shuffling back and forth, "but . . ."

Zelda's voice became solid and imperious. "Come, child. You will be all right. We must be off to meet the King's summons."

Ilia Harkinian's head bobbed in a slow nod. She said nothing more, one hand tickling the belly of her kitten as Zelda and I bowed and then left her on the garden path. When I glanced back at her, the fog was eating away the fine details of her form. I saw only a dark hood there, faceless in the twilight.

The interior of the central keep was aflurry with activity. Hallways thundered with constant footsteps. Squads of servants gave us a wide berth as Zelda and I marched the corridors.

I sensed that Zelda was leading me toward the center of the keep, as windows became few and far between. Well-used-looking lamps lit our progress. Smoke stains formed blots high on the walls. Soldiers lingered in seemingly every doorway, their faces tight and sweat-shiny.

A curving flight of stairs opened suddenly to our right. Two pairs of legionaries stood at its sides, gauntlets already touching the hilts of their swords. Though they nodded mordantly to Zelda and allowed us to mount the steps, the four men never let their hands drift from their weapons.

"This the Tower of Sight?" I asked.

"Yes." Her words echoed oddly in the wide, spiraling stairwell. Her form was made blurry by weak bands of light thrown by small windows.

Even the staircase proved crowded. Landings milled with soldiers and doors spewed forth harried servitors. One young man in brown robes came hurtling down the stairs, gritting his teeth and trying to keep a pair of spectacles from flying from his face. A stink of three-day sweat and terror followed him like the tail of a comet. When I glanced to Zelda to confirm that I had almost been knocked on my ass by this apparition, she only arched an eyebrow and gestured for me to keep climbing.

After what seemed like ten stories (but was likely half of that), we came to a landing so thick with soldiery that we could barely even fit onto it. They crowded about a pair of dark, shining doors of an official-looking bent. A thickset man – who I vaguely recognized – stepped to the fore and stared us down fiercely.

"Maid Imzadi," he said. His voice was that of a three-pack-a-day smoker.

Zelda bowed obsequiously and murmured, "Well met, Sir Droman. I was asked to escort Mister Olsen here."

The burly man nodded stiffly. He sported eyes like a badger's and some pretty rockin' gray-on-black sideburns. Sir Droman rasped, "Thank you, Zelda. The War Council awaits. The King an' Prime Minister ain't arrived yet, but they should shortly."

He turned those beady, bellicose eyes on me. "Mister Olsen – kindly enter yonder room and take a seat. I been asked to tell ya' to behave yourself. This is an important fuckin' meeting, it is." Without missing a beat, the knight nodded to Zelda and said, "Beggin' your forgiveness, miss."

Zelda smiled coyly, bowed, and started back down the stairs.

"Hey," I called after her. "You're just going?"

The handmaiden looked back at me quizzically. She said, "Of course. I am but a servant – the Council has no need of me. Is there anything that you require?"

Suddenly, my mouth felt very dry. I blinked and tried to suppress a shudder. "No," I finally said.

And there it was: That fucking morbid grin. The same wide, vaguely mocking model she had revealed the day before. Something predatory and perilous lurked behind that mirthless smile.

"Then I shall attend to my morning duties," Zelda said cheerfully. "Please ring for me after the meeting, should you need anything. I am certain that I will see you again soon."

With that odd promise, the handmaiden drifted down the stairwell and out of sight.

Sir Droman pressed me through the crush of guards about the doors and opened the way through. This close to him, I found that the knight carried a funk of body dirt and branna. He spread an unpleasant smile and shoved me into the room beyond the landing.

It was a big, semicircular chamber that I suspected took up the entirety of this floor of the tower. Dishwater-colored light trickled in through the windows surrounding the room. Fog-borne rivulets ran down the heavy glass.

Most of the many, many men standing in the room were arranged about the walls – much like the previous day's audience. It was notable that no women whatsoever were gathered here. A veritable sausage party, this.

However, those absent from the audience – namely, gorons and fairies – were in ready supply here. Handfuls of tiny, softly glowing bodies lingered near the windows. They chattered to one another in barely audible tones of television static. Gorons big and small were scattered through the crowd – almost all in dress unmistakably legionary in character.

I was genuinely surprised to see Sir Walther Kael standing away from the tightest groups, conversing tersely with a pair of similarly burly men. It was the first time I had seen him out of his complicated armor, now dressed in a gray tunic with a high gold collar. Similar outfits were in abundance about the chamber – a legionary uniform, perhaps. As I entered, Sir Kael's flinty eyes trained my way. He nodded curtly and I felt a chill reverberate down my back.

In the center of the chamber stood a massive conference table of dark, polished wood. On it was arranged a kind of abstract painting, set over the table's surface.

Wait – not a painting. A _map_.

Holy shit. Finally. A goddamn map of Hyrule!

I found myself doubling my stride to cross the room and get a better look at the thing. I didn't even notice the conversations flowing through the chamber squeeze into a trickle and then stop entirely. Quiet like a storm front descended as I stepped up to the giant map.

"Hell . . ." I muttered.

The massive representation of Hyrule was actually built directly into the table. _Was _the table, as it were. Vivid painted features over cream-colored stone. So far as I could tell, the map depicted a nation shaped like a titanic inverted comma, surrounded on three sides by snow-capped mountains and on the fourth by a gray-blue ocean. A small, perfunctory-looking compass was painted into one corner, but a lack of any knowledge of written Hylian kept me from figuring out which direction was which. I suspected that the ocean lay to the east, so that meant –

"This is a travesty."

Vaporous words rose from a miasma of silence. A hissing voice accompanied by the clop of boots.

I looked up to see a striking man rounding the table to advance on me. His burgundy tunic stuck out from the drabber, more spartan surroundings of the chamber. Prussian-blue eyes burning like extant pilot lights. His beard and facial structure: both magnificent. Were it not cut in a military style, I suspected that his sandy blonde hair would be ripe with curls. A sword sat sheathed in brilliant silver at his side.

He was, I realized, the same man who had worn the ostentatious red armor at the royal audience. The nobleman stopped short and gave me a contemptuous inspection. Powerful hands clenched, pressed together, and cracked knuckles. All eyes were upon us.

Scowling as if he had just stepped in dogshit, the bearded man declared, "Why is this _peasant _here?" A rocky brogue rolled beneath his words.

Taken aback, I chuffed, "Hey man, I was just told to show up. I'm really in the dark about the whole thing. So why don't you back off?"

"Do you know who I _am_?" he sneered.

I glared at him. "No. But I do know that anyone who says, 'Do you know who I am?' is a fucking douchebag."

Someone gasped. Across the room from where I stood, a smallish desk had been set up under one of the gray-smeared windows. From behind a mountain range of open books, tattered ledgers, and rolls of parchment, a pair of huge eyes stared out. They blinked in anticipation of bloodshed.

I caught sight of Sir Kael as he stepped closer, clearly keen to get a better view of things. There was an ever-so-slight smile on his lips.

The blonde nobleman jabbed a finger at me and snarled, "Know this, _knave_ – I am General Renaldo Baeleus! Commander-in-Chief of the Second Legion and Lord of House Baeleus. But a week ago, I could have had you thrown in a cell for the manner you just insulted me."

"Well, thank God it's not a week ago!" I said.

Not good. I could feel my blood getting up – the old temper bashing against the bulwarks. Only moments before it burst through and created yet another incident.

Renaldo Baeleus took a cautious step to the side, but kept his eyes locked on me as if was about to throw down. Despite his extravagant clothes and meticulously coiffed appearance, I got the impression that this man knew how to handle himself in a fight.

His eyes burned like bright stars as he said, "Though the King may side with you, I want you to know that many in this room do not believe that you are the Hero. I count myself proudly among their number. Your words and actions offend, miscreant." Baeleus nodded in the direction of the Master Sword and curled fingers over the hilt of his own blade. "And not even that sword is proof enough that you could possibly be Hyrule's divine savior."

"Hear hear!" a basso voice called out from the assembled crowd. Though I couldn't see the fucker, I wanted to track him down and strangle him.

Anger shredded at my brain. Throttle back, man. Can't let this blow up. Deep breaths through the nostrils. Air full of sour sweat, wood, and the distant tinge of wet brick.

I finally hissed, "Whatever you say, Lord Ottombottom. If they're bringing even me up here, I'd say we probably both have bigger fish to fry."

Renaldo Baeleus shouted, "Why, you _gutless _little –!"

There was a boom and a shudder as the chamber doors flew open. Into the conference room thundered three men: High General Petyr Eldridge, Prime Minister Rauru al-Ramarji, and the High King himself, Daphnes Harkinian.

They were all in varying stages of fussed-over but inevitably unmanageable dishevelment. The general bore the same uniform legionary colors I saw about the room. The bags under his eyes were like bomb craters. The Prime Minister came in similarly nondescript clothes, though his own look was of icy stoicism.

King Harkinian wore loose, flowing garments that probably cost a Hylian month's salary to make. Out of the ceremonial vestments I had last seen him in, his appearance was less regal and more imposing – a huge, determined man with arms like tree limbs and a sword at his hip. With no crown upon his head, no one traced darshan. However, everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and attempted to go to one knee.

Waving his hand as he came, the King rumbled, "Be seated – please be seated. We have little time for formalities this day."

Two-dozen men pulled themselves painfully from half-kneeling. A few doffed their tri-corner hats or skullcaps. "Oh – shit," I muttered. I quickly pulled off my cap and bunched it in one fist.

General Renaldo Baeleus shot me a fiery glance, curled his lip in disgust, and pulled out a seat at the table. All about us, the other attendees of the War Council blundered into whatever seats they could find. As Baeleus sat, his expression seemed to announce, _This isn't done between us_.

I backed away from the conference table, clambered around a retreating goron, and scooted into an empty chair near the wall. When I looked back to the central table, Harkinian was halfway to the head seat. He looked at me oddly, as if I was attempting an escape. He abruptly motioned for me.

"Please take a seat at the map table, Mister Olsen. I wish you to see this fully."

So, buffeted by the coughs and mutters of the men seated about me, I crossed the room, picked a random open seat of the dozen about the table, and shucked myself into position.

From here, I was able to get a much better look at the map of Hyrule painted on the table's surface. In addition to the general shape of the country, the map depicted swathes of green plains and brown hills; blue veins of rivers; labeled points that had to mean towns; subtle cross-hatchings to indicate scale. Increasingly brown to the north; very green to the south; a patchwork of green and gray to the west; gray bleeding into blue out east.

A hook-shaped arc of barrier islands sprang from the mainland and ran southeastward into the ocean. One got the idea that their farthest outlines were more guesses than fact.

Near the center of the map was a bright star with a bolded label. Judging by the three rivers that converged on it, this was Hylium.

Scattered about the table were tiny, red and black clay discs. Almost all of the black discs were clustered beyond a point some distance north of capitol city. Red chips were scattered about the map, though most occupied the same painted frontier as the black ones. Both colors ranged from the western mountains all the way to the cracked and complicated coastline.

King Harkinian settled into his seat at the head of the table. Jagged, blurring peaks rose below his elbows. "I call this meeting of the War Council to order," the King rumbled. "There is much to discuss and little time to discuss it in."

The man at the side desk produced an immense quill. He flopped open a ledger half full of ink-heavy pages. The other half was empty and glowed the color of buttermilk. When the King recommenced speaking, the quill jabbed a fresh page and set to scribbling at a blinding pace. The manic scratching sound of the quill-tip accompanied every word that ran through the rest of this meeting.

"As many of you already know or have guessed," King Harkinian boomed, "forces of the Protectorate have crossed the Faron Bluffs."

A huge breath, like the pump of a bellows.

"Once again we find ourselves in open war."


	33. 33

**33**

There was a moment in which no one in the room seemed to breathe. Then came a hissing thunderclap of voices – ranging from curses to exhortations of the goddesses to variations on, _Yes, I told you so_.

The King waited patiently before raising a hand, as if he could simply bat away the tumult with it. The council chamber quieted grudgingly. Harkinian cleared his throat and said, "High General Eldridge will guide us through the events of the last twelve hours. Please listen closely and carefully."

The pork-bellied general tilted out of his seat and was speaking before he had even straightened his back. I had to admit that the guy had a pretty fantastic speaking voice. It was slow, deep, and deliberate.

"Gentlemen . . ." Eldridge said, ". . . the nightmare we have feared for so long has come to pass. Ganon's troops have broken the Legions' lines. They march within populated Hylian lands even as we speak."

Eldridge leaned into the table and breathlessly began:

"Last night, at approximately eight bells, a concentrated force of Protectorate soldiers assaulted the pickets at Fort Tybalt." I now noticed an unruly pile of black and red chips before the general. He pulled a black disc from the heap and placed it on the map. It rested on a zigzag of painted hills far north of Hylium, now toe-to-toe with one of the red chips.

"In the ensuing struggle, the fort was overtaken and its defenders scattered. We believe that General Fierro of the Eighth Legion was slain, along with most of his Banner-Commanders."

There flew shouts of shock, indignation, and outright grief. The King narrowed his eyes and glared at the black chip like it was a canker.

"Within hours," Eldridge continued, "forts and garrisons along the whole of the line came under coordinated attack. From Brasco Keep in the Vales to Port Bones on the coast. Some were small raids – clearly feints designed to rattle our teeth a bit. Others remain ongoing. Fort Ilia is currently besieged by forces of the Damned Remnant."

More black chips fell on the borders of red ones. With a hesitant hand, the High General removed the red circle at Fort Tybalt.

"The Eighth Legion is in shambles," he reported. "Its remainder is still in retreat. A massive column of Protectorate troops marches on its heels."

Now more shouts, entreaties, and asides erupted from the attendees.

"We must pull back the Legions!" spouted a gangly, terrified-looking man. "They must pursue and destroy the army that pierced the line!"

"Impossible!" barked General Baeleus. "If our forts remain at siege, then any withdrawal will only result in further penetration of our borders."

Waving a hand for silence, Prime Minister Rauru said, "Quite so, Sir Baeleus. We struggle even now to maintain the line. However, the Protectorate army moving on our soil must also be stopped."

The King cut in, growling, "The invaders _will _be crushed! The wound they have given us shall be cauterized!" When this outburst silenced any lingering debate, he spread his arms and bellowed, "We must focus, friends! Now, of all times!" Harkinian pointed to Rauru and asked, "How many are there?"

In front of the Prime Minister sat a small stack of loose paper. Inky memos ran across the pages. Rauru cleared his throat and pulled a page seemingly at random from the pile. I noted that, even though he held it before him like a script, he never actually looked at it.

"Thousands, your majesty," Rauru said. "Many thousands. An early flyover by fairy scouts gave a rough count of between twenty and thirty. This does not take into account any reinforcements that may march through the gap at Tybalt."

One of the ministers seated at the table swore under his breath.

Harkinian nodded squarely and asked, "It isn't Ganon's main host, then?"

"No, majesty. We believe that this started with a test against the lines of the Eighth Legion. Apparently, the lads at the middle of the main picket were caught unawares and broke ranks," Eldridge sighed. "We have reason to believe that enemy berserkers and grenadiers actually assaulted the main barracks as our boys slept."

Breathless murmurs of disapproval swam about the chamber.

"For all we know," Eldridge said, "this attack may have been thrown together on the spur of the moment. A heavy thrust precipitated by our lads' confusion.

"However, I must warn your majesty – and there is some evidence of this – that this may have been a long-planned and excellently equipped sneak attack. We have reports that this is not a normal force – even by a standard as corrupt as the Protectorate's."

Outside, the light slicing through the clouds was coming through cleaner and clearer. Yellow morning luminescence burned through the fog.

"Do we know who leads them?" Harkinian rumbled.

The High General glanced about and said, "Though early debriefings mentioned only the usual mix of irregular infantry and heavy cavalry, the latest scouting reports indicate a heavier-than-usual rearguard of mages, vat beasts, and alchemically enhanced soldiers. Such a concentration of sorcerous military power would indicate –"

"The Moon Guild," the King murmured. He leaned forward, eyes an unblinking and impenetrable wall, and clasped his hands together. "Count Drex."

Some of the assembled men mimed spitting on the floor.

Rauru ran his hand over his chin. "Majesty," he said, "it would be remiss of me not to relay one last rumor. We have not verified it, but it bears mentioning."

The King looked at his advisor evenly. "Go on."

"Majesty – acting on strange reports from fleeing scouts, a squad of deep-cover spies was dispatched to the rear of the enemy troop body. Only one returned – and he, ah, died shortly after giving his report. Though the fairy was half-mad from his wounds, he reported a bizarre caravan trailing the Protectorate forces."

Rauru turned his polished eyes to each other man about the table, lingering as if in recrimination. "The spy's testimony – along with the rumors that spurred his deployment – indicate that this caravan belongs to the Inner Council."

For this, no one had an observation or rejoinder. Even the King sat silently, brow knitted, hands constricted until the knuckles were white.

"It is of no consequence," the King eventually said. "We have no choice but to proceed with a counterattack."

"No consequence?" This exclamation fired from a rather skinny man sitting down the table from us. He wore official looking robes and an expression of barely suppressed panic. "If even _one _of the tales be true, then our legions stand no –"

"Enough, Minister Tao." Harkinian stared at the man less with anger than with disinterest. "The Inner Council is a myth wrapped in a rumor. Though we shall proceed cautiously, we cannot plan around the dancing of poes. The true question before us is thus: How shall we answer this assault without compromising our already tenuous defensive lines? What armies shall ride to meet these invaders? And where shall they meet in battle?"

Yes, I thought, thoroughly confused and miserable. That's the only question. Jesus. At least I had been a good little boy up to this point, not allowing any of my thousand points of befuddlement to gain a voice. I was finally heeding the call to speak only when spoken to.

High General Eldridge's plump cheeks and high forehead were cherry red. He extended a hand over the map and decisively said, "There are two legions not defending the line that are within marching distance of the enemy force." Eldridge tapped a red disc not far from one indicating the invaders. "The Third Legion, under command of General Tolskai." Now he indicated another red chip, farther south of the first and situated in a wide cradle of even green. "And the Second Legion, commanded by General Baeleus himself."

"Lord Baeleus," the King asked, "are your men prepared for a fight?"

The General nodded enthusiastically. "Until a month ago, the Second garrisoned the cliffs of Fort Vantas. We have been on maneuvers in western Faron Province after trading duties with the Fifteenth Legion. I am certain that my cohorts are on alert and are ready to march even as we speak."

"That is still some days' journey," Petyr Eldridge grumbled. "Better to send the Third to fortify the pass at Rambalion. Make a stand there and hope the Second is quick on its feet . . ."

Rauru shook his head. "If the scouts' reports prove true, it will take more than a single legion to stop this horde. Perhaps more than two."

"Then what would you have us do?" a stocky man in a legionary tunic growled. He sat down the table, at the elbow of General Baeleus. "These are populated lands that the monsters are moving through! There are still towns and plantations in the path of that army. _Women and children_."

"To say nothing of the Eighth!"

I couldn't identify the source of the outburst until I noticed all eyes training on none other than Sir Walther Kael. He colored under the sudden attention, but straightened and coughed, "Begging your pardon, ministers n' majesty. But – by my reckoning, General Cole has the right of it."

When no one spoke either in support or rebuke, the gray-eyed knight continued, "We can't abandon the Eighth Legion. Though they may have failed at Tybalt, the lads of the Eighth are good men. They deserve a chance to redeem themselves."

Though it had been an unsolicited intrusion into the council's plans, no one seemed irritated or alarmed by Kael's words. In fact, the King nodded along as if in stern agreement.

Harkinian asked, "How far ahead of the Protectorate column is the Eighth Legion?"

General Eldridge uncomfortably said, "Uncertain, your majesty. At most, a half-day's march."

"Too thin a margin." Harkinian leaned back in his chair and declared, "Then we have two goals, one hopefully supplementing the other. The first: to save the remaining men of the Eighth Legion from the wrath of the horde at their backs. Second: to gather an adequate counterstrike. In this, I see an opportunity.

"Know this!" the King suddenly bellowed. The constant scrabble of the clerk's quill hiccupped and he shot his monarch a chiding glance. "I hereby command that cavalry elements of the legions defending the Faron line be sent to harry the flanks of the invading army. One-third of the following legions' horse shall raid the enemy at their discretion until it is clear that the column has slowed to compensate." Harkinian stood and jabbed a finger at red chips still sitting on the northern border region.

A dozen glossy quills appeared throughout the chamber. Eager hands, ready to relay the word of the King to waiting couriers.

The King listed out legions as if simply counting upward. He skipped the Second, Third, and Eighth Legions for obvious reasons, skipped over the Eleventh, and stopped counting at the Fifteenth.

"Furthermore, I decree that these appointed raiders, upon completion of this first task, shall ride south with all due speed. Those of the Fourth, Fifth, and Seventh Legions shall protect the retreating column of the Eighth Legion. The rest shall proceed to rendezvous with the combined forces of the Second and Third Legions."

Harkinian swept a long arm over the table and out to the assembled writers. "This I decree. War Council – are there any objections?"

The generals and ministers gathered about Hyrule-in-miniature stared and thought and nodded appreciatively. When no one voiced concerns, High General Eldridge declared, "I believe those figures are sufficient for a sustained campaign of mounted harassment. A fine and decisive action, your majesty. Let it be so."

There was a gale of whispers, followed by the shuffle and flop of parchment being folded into pockets. Some half-dozen men stood with chair-borne clatters and rushed pell-mell from the room. One fairy buzzed out the open doors so fast that he looked like an orange meteor streaking nonsensically through the daylight.

The King wasted no time, launching back into the brainstorming session even as boots clomped behind his words. He murmured, "Even with the combined might of these disparate horsemen and three legions, I fear that it will not be enough. Not if the Protectorate army has been reinforced through the gap made at Tybalt."

There followed some minutes of dickering among the assembled ministers and generals as to whether High General Eldridge should lead the First Legion out of Hylium and into battle. They debated whether the capitol's defense should be so blithely removed in this time of crisis. Eldridge himself insisted that the offensive needed his war mages to stand up to the threat of Count Drex.

"_My _mages can handle anything that rotting old alchemist can throw at us," General Baeleus said flatly.

Outside, a black-winged, blue-crested bird lit on one of the windowsills. It cocked its beak quizzically at the strange gathering beyond the glass. When it flew into the paling morning, I felt a stab of jealousy beneath my breastbone.

Eventually, all agreed that select elements of the First Legion – including those aforementioned sorcerous "grenadiers" – would march north to meet the other Hylian defenders. The majority of the First would remain at alert in Hylium.

At this point, the meeting came to a dread-laden moment of quiet. The King's scarred lips quivered and then he spoke haltingly, deliberately, and decisively:

"We have yet to answer a simple, terrible question: How can we defeat a concentrated invasion with forces still days away from being ready for combat?

"The answer, gentlemen, is _delay_. Stall them; harass them; draw them deeper into foreign territory that they cannot command. Seal the hole through which they came and they will have no reinforcement to count upon. We must confound the invaders until we can marshal our strength and confront them on our own terms."

Renaldo Baeleus's face slowly split in a cat-got-the-canary smirk. He said, "If I might be so bold, your majesty: Am I wrong in thinking you have already formulated a plan?"

Harkinian said, "Indeed. This is what I propose: As the cavalry of the defending legions slows the invaders and the Eighth Legion makes its retreat, the Second and Third Legions shall also fall back to the south. They will lead the Protectorate column on a forced march that will exhaust and demoralize the enemy.

"As soon as they are able, the Fifth and Ninth Legions shall deploy from the line and retake Tybalt. If I am not mistaken, they are in the strongest position to throw off their besiegers."

There were nods of acknowledgment from the Prime Minister and High General.

"At the same time, elements of the First Legion – grenadiers and any others we see fit – shall sally forth from the capitol and race northward. A grand army shall gather south of the advancing enemy. Then – and _only _then – will our combined forces strike back at Ganon's scourge."

King Harkinian stepped away from his chair. He walked slowly and about the table. With a slight grin, he leaned over the map and stabbed a finger into a green and gray spike of land far south of where the black enemy disc currently sat.

"We will meet them _here_," he announced. "And it is there that we shall annihilate them."

Blinking; intakes of breath; mutters.

"_Stoneheart_ Province?" General Baeleus blurted.

"Indeed, General. The Kerneghi River Valley, to be exact. Or, to place an even finer point on it: the mouth of Kerneghi Gorge. Our combined legions shall engage the Protectorate forces across its gap."

Prime Minister Rauru half-stood, eyes in slits, and murmured, "Your majesty . . . that is at least four days' march for any troops from Hylium."

"Precisely!" Harkinian purred. "It will be an equivalent number for the Protectorate army, will it not?"

Though Rauru nodded, it was with a face wracked by sudden hesitation. Perhaps the most naked emotion I'd yet seen on the man.

The Prime Minister said, "You have the right of it, your majesty. However, that valley is quite deep in the kingdom's populated lands. We will have to evacuate any citizens lingering in Faron and northern Stoneheart. Furthermore, that is but a few hours' ride from your majesty's ancestral keep. It brings the battle dangerously close to the heart and soul of Hyrule."

"It also brings the enemy farther away from its home territory," the King said. "If we can trick them into pursuing what appears to be a panicked and retreating army, we can also cut them off from whatever support might try to come over the Bluffs."

Rauru's mustache twitched. High General Eldridge mopped sweat from his face with a handkerchief. General Baeleus studied the map intently and tapped a gloved finger on the edge of the table. All about, men were trying to process the development.

After an entire meeting without saying a single syllable, _I _was the one to break the uneasy silence. "How do we know they'll take the bait?" I asked. It was strange to find the sound of my own voice so surprising.

Captain Doucheface himself answered my question. "In almost five years of warfare," Renaldo Baeleus said, in a tone one might use to address a five-year-old, "Protectorate troops have never turned down the opportunity to pursue a fleeing opponent. Many a man of Hyrule has died with a pike in his back."

"Aye, aye . . ." sighed probably more than a dozen voices in concert.

Realizing that he once more had the room's attention, Baeleus continued, "I, for one, am amenable to such a plan. It will need revision and strict refinement, but I believe that we have struck upon a good bargain.

"Your majesty: My legion is encamped not a day's ride from Kerneghi. It will be a simple thing for my men to establish a base camp from which we may launch the counterattack. Allow me the honor of leading this offensive."

The King nodded. "As you shall, Lord Baeleus. Should this council move forward with this plan, you shall command both your legion and the entirety of the expeditionary force."

The disappointment on High General Eldridge's face was a twisting, livid thing. For his part, General Baeleus leaned back and looked as if he had found a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

Shaking his head, Rauru breathed, "Indeed, it is certain that we must act with haste. All the same, your majesty – I am uncomfortable with the risks presented by this plan. It is a bold stratagem, but contingent on many variables. What if the northern riders fail? What if the enemy does not slow? What if even this composite army is not enough to stem the tide?"

The fire in the King's eyes dimmed. He frowned and pressed his weight into the table edge. "Old friend," Harkinian said glumly, "we have not the time to worry over what-ifs and might-bes. A campaign of this speed requires planning on the march. Planning that I am more than certain that Generals Eldridge, Baeleus, and Tolskai will be able to accomplish.

"As for whether we can turn back this invasion with the available forces, I beseech you to have faith in the might of Hyrule's defenders. If the goddesses be kind, we shall have nearly forty-thousand fighters at our disposal."

It was then that the King grew an altogether disquieting smile. It was a serene but intensely purposeful expression. Some foreknowledge of a beauty only he could understand. With his sonorous, clipped voice he declared, "What is more – what is _more_!We shall deploy a mighty weapon. Perhaps not a _secret _weapon, now . . . but I believe that it is the greatest weapon righteous men can possibly wield against evil. A weapon that shall prove our salvation."

Oh shit. Please not now. Not this.

I unconsciously gripped the burled table edge. Cool sweat beaded over my eyebrows.

Minister Tao – whom I was beginning to wonder about – piped up: "And what might that be, your majesty?"

King Harkinian crooned, "Why, the Hero of legend, Minister. None other than the Link himself."

Everyone seemed to need a few moments to let this sink in.

If the Prime Minister had been hesitant before, now he was outright horrified. He sputtered, "Majesty, we are still not certain –"

"Then let us _be _certain!" Harkinian barked. "Let us settle the issue, once and for all!"

He turned like a lightning bolt and fixed his gaze on me.

"Mister Olsen," the King thundered. "Stand!"

I stood. My chair made an inelegant snort as it was pushed away from the table. I tried not to shake.

King Harkinian extended a hand as if to present me. "Linus Olsen. Are you ready to serve me? Are you willing to do what must be done?"

Don'tpassoutdon'tpassout.

"I serve at his majesty's pleasure," I squeaked.

"Excellent," the King boomed. "Thus it shall be: I bid you travel with the men of the First Legion chosen for this great venture. The time has come for you to prove yourself. You shall ride with the proud Legions of Hyrule."

The King smiled imperiously and declared, "On the field of battle at Kerneghi, the goddesses shall tell us once and for all whether or not you are truly the Hero of the Triforce."

You could have heard an ant crawling across the council chamber. Many held a common expression – something akin to finding out that the pork they had been served was actually roast baby. A wide-eyed personal accounting of something terrible and nearly unfathomable.

There was no indecision or awe in Renaldo Baeleus's eyes. He stared directly at me, hands balled into fists, with a fury almost impossible to contain. I was certain that the General was three seconds from a primal yowl. Bloodbath in the council chamber.

What else could I do? Someone needed to break the tension.

"Will that be all?" I asked. Then: "Your majesty?"

King Harkinian stared at me blandly for some seconds. Then he broke into a wide-mouthed grin and allowed himself a half-dozen deep, genuine belly-laughs.

"Yes, Mister Olsen. I bid you be seated. Haha. Indeed." As I sat, boneless as a planarian worm, the King said, "Hoho. 'Will that be all?' he asks. That is either naiveté or steel, my friends."

When the King had laughed, a peculiar sense of relief sluiced through the chamber. Now even Petyr Eldridge's puffy cheeks bore evidence of an exhausted smirk. The High General idly said, "Can it not be both?"

"I wish I had either," Minister Tao opined shakily. For whatever reason, a round of soft laughter ran about the table. The sort of giggles that accompany the uncoiling of tight and awful interludes. Giddiness in the midst of interminable stress.

General Baeleus's right eyelid twitched.

The world beyond the tower windows was slowly turning green and soft gold. Spire needles cut across the windows' fields of view. More and more of the palace revealed itself through the withering mists.

Prime Minister Rauru al-Ramarji stood and inclined his head. He pointed eyes the color of armor at his King. "Shall it be final, then?" the aging man said. "Shall we, the War Council of Hyrule, approve this plan to intercept and engage our invaders?"

There were weak nods from some quarters; enthusiastic _Ayes_ from others. High General Eldridge shrugged and said softly, "We will need to refine it, but I believe that the shape of the plan is sound. Better to implement it now and change it later, rather than lose lives by dithering."

"Mmm – aye."

"Hear hear!"

"Agreed."

Rauru languidly turned his head. "General Baeleus?"

The blonde nobleman blinked and awkwardly snapped to attention. "Yes?" he rasped.

"Do you still approve of our King's proposed strategy?" the Prime Minister prodded.

"Ah," Baeleus chuffed. "Yes. I do. And I shall execute it faithfully, with every ounce of my ability." He chewed on those final words as if they were a rancid strip of gristle.

"I cannot help but note the hesitation in your voice, General," the King said coolly. Prime Minister al-Ramarji nodded and gestured for the man to say whatever it was that was on his mind.

General Renaldo Baeleus's eyebrows lifted. His jaw went tight and he sucked a massive breath through his nostrils. At last, he seemed to summon a final draught of courage and said, "Your majesty . . . I know that I step beyond my bounds . . . but now, in this most perilous of times, I must beseech you to issue the writ of general conscription."

If the man had dropped his trousers and taken a shit on the table, I'm not sure that it would have caused a more awkward reaction. First came goggling – then dropped jaws – and finally a sweeping wave of murmurs that tore through the assembled men.

As ever, I sat dumbly and wondered what the fuck had just happened.

"Please. Hear me out." General Baeleus held his arms in wide supplication. "Though the Legions are flush with volunteers, a protracted engagement will weaken the ranks considerably. More importantly, we do not have nearly the strength to mount an invasion of the conquered provinces."

The King stared at the blonde general with an expression so neutral it might have been a ceramic mask. We all floated on a tide of whispers and statements of outright recrimination or support.

"Ain't never gonna be no invasion . . ."

". . . but he _does _have a point . . ."

"At a time like this?"

"And it was goin' so well . . ."

"Please." This last voice belonged to the man of the moment himself. "I beseech you. We _must _be able to conscript from the general populace if we are to win this war. Ganon or no, we cannot triumph without at least ten more legions' worth of soldiery. In this offensive, there is an opportunity both to strike the enemy a major blow _and _justify issuing the writ."

The King's palm rose. Baeleus fell quiet. The room followed suit.

"General Baeleus," Harkinian rumbled. "I hear and appreciate your request. It is well considered. Nonetheless, you especially should know that I cannot grant it.

"These are times of prophecy, General. An age told of in the ancient scriptures of our people. I believe that Ganon is not an enemy that can be defeated by brute force of arms. The Old Darkness is a divine punishment, and long have I maintained that only a divine promise can turn it back.

"Moreover, forced conscription – even during a time of crisis – can only divide a people from its rulers. The Press-Gang Riots nearly burned Great Bay to the ground two centuries ago, and I'd not see such a thing in my reign."

Like a remonstrated child, the usually solid Renaldo gradually shrank lower in his chair. Hate and shame spun in his gaze.

Harkinian attempted a more genial, forgiving look. The vague outline of a smile.

"Come now, Sir Baeleus. Though I understand your wish to retake your homeland, we cannot rush blindly into decisions that can only damage Hyrule as a whole. Especially when the answer to all our prayers may be within our grasp."

Shaking visibly, the general groped for words. Color drained from his face. When he opened his eyes, they belonged to a wild man.

He hissed, "You would place all the hopes for a free kingdom in a man you met only a day ago? A man who arrived on your doorstep under the most suspicious kind of circumstances?"

Aw shit, son. Though this last invective was thrown my way, I was oddly uncut by it. Instead, I took rueful pleasure in the constricting body language of all seated about the council table.

"My lord . . ." Rauru sighed, pressing palm to forehead.

Baeleus's fists suddenly crashed down on the painted ocean before his seat. "Are you all absolutely _blind_? Do you not see the obvious import of what has occurred? And _how_?"

A gloved finger, visibly shaking, shot out like an arrow aimed straight for my heart.

"Ganon's filth strikes in the night. Now? Of all times?" A lion's snarl; a bestial rictus. "What a grand coincidence that this occurs after the arrival of this, this _whelp_! This 'hero,' who sashays like a vagabond into the chambers of the Council of Lords and acts as if he owns all that he surveys. Praised by dullards and vindicated by madmen! A foreigner cloaked in rumors and half-truths, welcomed into the Imperial Palace as an honored guest.

"And then, not even twelve hours later, our men – our brave _Hylian _men – are murdered in the night! Slaughtered in their tents and sent running shamefully through the wilderness. All victims of an ambush no doubt planned exactly to coincide with the distraction in our capitol."

All right: That one struck home. I felt my ribcage grow three times too small to hold all the organs within.

"Lord Baeleus, _I beseech you_ –" the Prime Minister pleaded.

"This man is _not _our savior!" Baeleus howled. A gobbet of saliva actually launched from his lips and splattered somewhere on Hyrule's northeastern coastline. "He is obviously a minion of the enemy! A spy! A saboteur and a murderer!"

"ENOUGH!"

Daphnes Harkinian's shout came like a cannon shot. The scars on his lips stood very white against the canyon of a grimace that split the crags of his face. A beastly visage to rival and overmaster Baeleus's. Slow, indomitable fury radiated from his body like a tundra gale.

Holy shit: So that's where the Princess gets it.

Across the table, Renaldo Baeleus blinked as if waking. Startled, trembling. Not so much a soldier as a teenager caught stealing from his parent's wallet. He swallowed and said nothing.

"General Renaldo Baeleus," the King growled. "I bid you cease this mad prattle. Do not utter it in my presence again. Do you understand?"

Baeleus nodded.

"It is only out of respect for your brave service that I shall not strip you of your command in the upcoming battle. And respect for your late father that I do not eject you from my chamber."

The mighty general stared sullenly, as a child rebuked. He whispered, "Yes, majesty. I have forgotten myself. I beg your majesty's forgiveness."

Though Harkinian's features did not soften, he did pass a hand gently through the air. "I grant it, Lord Baeleus. I only ask that you take better care of your words in my presence."

"I serve at his majesty's pleasure," Renaldo Baeleus murmured. He attempted a bow and found his torso blocked by the table edge. He was unable to hide his disgust.

The King didn't allow any time for reflection on the incident. He immediately said, "Ministers and War Councilors, I welcome your advice. Do any here find flaw in this plan? Shall we take a combined army – of roughly four legions – north to Stoneheart Province? Shall we strike back at the Protectorate in Kerneghi Gorge?"

There were signs and sounds of approval for the measure. When no one spoke out, Prime Minister Rauru stood and locked fingers over his chest.

"It is a very good, broad plan, your majesty," he said. "If implemented, we will have some days to perfect it." Rauru bowed to the King. "We shall move forward then, your majesty."

Another pause for commentary elicited none.

The King formed a fist and pressed it silently against the surface of the table. His knuckles brushed hillsides and were bisected by a river. Harkinian boomed, "It is decided! See to it that all necessary arrangements are made. Issue your orders. I want to see legionaries riding from Hylium by the afternoon."

Suddenly, Harkinian snapped his fingers and laughed quietly. "Ah, yes. There is one more matter that needs attending. A quick bit of bureaucracy." The King turned in his seat and leaned out to the surrounding men. He beckoned and said, "Sir Kael."

The knight stood straight as a tree trunk. "I serve at your pleasure, majesty!" he shouted.

Harkinian nodded and evenly said, "I hereby decree that you be relieved of your duty as Banner-Commander of the Cavalry United of the First Legion."

Rarely had I seen a man as distraught as Walther Kael now became. His craggy face fell slack and then contorted. "Your majesty!" he murmured. "If I have done anything to offend –"

The King rumbled on, heedless of Kael's plea: ". . . And I also decree that you are to be relocated to the position of Banner-Commander of the Cavalry United of the Third." A pleased grin sprouted on Harkinian as he watched Sir Kael's jaw drop. The King gestured to the scribe seated at the desk across the room. "Mister Tarum, who is the current Banner-Commander of the Third Legion's horse?"

The spritely man seized a huge green ledger from amid the muddled piles and leafed through it furiously. "Mmmmm," he buzzed. "That would be Commander Iliff, your majesty."

"See to it that Sir Iliff becomes Banner-Commander of the Eighth. That legion is badly in need of reinforcement, is it not?"

The clerk nodded quick as a hummingbird and set to scribbling a letter, presumably containing the King's order.

Kael stood stock still, stunned into speechlessness. Though his face was ironclad, his mouth still gaped half open.

"I am aware that these orders shall come as a shock not only to you, but most of the men here," Harkinian continued gently. "But I assure you that, despite my tone, I considered this matter with the utmost seriousness."

"Sir Walther Kael. My loyal friend. I hereby charge you not only with the command of the Third Legion's mounted cavalry, but also with the safety and security of Linus Olsen – claimant apparent to the title of Hero. You shall escort him on the journey to Stoneheart Province and take him under your wing during the battles to come. From this moment forward, Mister Olsen is yours to command – but also to protect. I bid you take this into your heart as your most sacred charge."

King Harkinian held the knight's unblinking gaze. "Do you understand, Sir Kael? Do you accept?"

For a moment, Walther Kael only stared. At last, he nodded gravely. No words. Just the rusty tilt of his chin. Harkinian beamed with accomplishment at the gesture.

"And that shall have to do!" the King enthused. "Which is to say – you are all dismissed. Please see immediately to preparations for this offensive."

Harkinian stood, solid as some old Norse god, and cried, "Long live Hyrule! Ever may she prosper!"

And in a crashing chorus, all else in the chamber sang, "LONG LIVE THE KING!"


	34. 34

**34**

The council dispersed in a storm of pride and purpose. Clerks and soldiers alike rushed from the room. No doubt the office of Sir Erik Perun would do a booming business this day.

General Renaldo Baeleus shot me one last searing glance and then pushed away from the map table. He muttered irritably to a pair of men who met him in the crowd. Then all three were gone, filing out with the crush of soldiery.

I just sat there, blinking, more confused and dismayed than anything else. It felt like I had just been mugged by a set of sentient, alien encyclopedias. I watched the other men hurry determinedly from the council chamber and felt like a lost child.

The King, who had also not risen, stared at me with a vaguely irked expression. "Do you have anything to add, Mister Olsen?" he rumbled.

Oh, just a few-hundred things, I thought. I'd say we'll want to order out for Chinese for this one. It's going to be a long day.

Rather than give voice to my doubts, I meekly said, "No, your majesty. I'm just . . . well . . . what do I do now?"

Harkinian shrugged. It was a bizarre gesture coming from a man so massive and inherently regal. "Well? I would say that you should get to preparing, Mister Olsen. You leave for battle this very day! None of us – _especially_ you – have time to waste!" He made a jocular shooing motion. "Off with you, then. I bid you be ready to leave within hours. Word has already been sent to Maid Imzadi to assist you in any preparations that are necessary."

So I stood, made an awkward bow, and lumbered from the chamber. Harkinian and the Prime Minister stayed behind – presumably to hash out more details for the coming days. The few remaining attendees gave me a wide berth as I wandered out to the landing. Almost no men milled about now – they all tromped up or down the curving stairs.

A fairy flew past me, buzzing my ear by only a few inches. Wing-beats like tiny rotors. "Pardon!" a bizarrely deep voice called out. His glowing form shot up the stairwell like a Lilliputian UFO.

Out in the stairwell, Sir Walther Kael took the steps with a slow raggedness. His gait suggested that he had been recently hit in the head with a baseball bat.

For the first time in what felt like months, a sudden imperative seized me. A businesslike realization: I needed to talk with that man. No matter how much he disliked me; no matter how quickly he was trying to leave my presence; no matter whether it would bear fruit of any sort. If I was going to sort out what had just happened, I needed to talk to the knight currently clomping away from me.

"Sir Walther!" I called.

Kael turned back with a confused, quizzical expression. "Aye?"

I all but dashed off the landing, shouldering my way past a pair of dour men in robes. As I mounted the stairs, I said, "Hey, man. Shouldn't I, like, be going with you?"

The knight appeared confused by the question, so I continued, "Since you're my, um, commanding officer or whatever?"

"His majesty left the parameters of our arrangement rather vague," Kael said. "I suspect that we will have to decide upon them once we arrive in Stoneheart. Unless, of course, you are volunteering to join the First Legion."

I shrugged. "I have no idea. I guess not?"

"Then I shall talk with you again once we have reached our destination."

"Wait. Wait wait wait. Listen." I took a breath. "I really need your help. I have no fucking clue what's going on and since I'm supposed to be under your wing anyway, I figured we could talk."

"About?" Kael said flatly.

"Everything!" I blurted. "I only understood about half of what was said in there. I get that Hyrule is under attack. I get that we're going to ride out to meet the fuckers up north. But everything else? Shit like 'the Damned Remnant?' Moon Guild? Inner Council? I am way, way out of my depth here."

Sir Kael sighed stuffily and said, "Mister Olsen, it is imperative that I return to legionary headquarters and prepare for my transfer to the Third. High General Eldridge will no doubt want to liaise with me as we organize the departure from Hylium."

"Come on," I pleaded. "If I'm going to be any use to you whatsoever, I at least need an idea of what I'm up against. I need to get a handle on this, man."

Sir Kael stared stone-facedly. Soldiers rushed past us, down into the bowels of the keep. Finally, the knight nodded hesitantly. "Walk with me, then."

Score.

"What do you want to know?" Walther Kael asked. I tried to keep abreast of him as we descended, but this was easier said than done on the perpetually occupied stairs.

God, where to start? I hadn't been lying when I said that the War Council meeting had been a long, battering marathon of frustration.

I settled for, "How far away is all this happening?"

"About six days' ride, if you kill a few horses to get there."

I boggled at this. "How do you know what happened _last night_, then?"

"Hawks' wings are much faster than hooves, Mister Olsen. Automatic writers and gossip stones are even faster." Kael allowed himself a smirk.

"Okay," I breathed. Fine then: Let's go with something more basic. "Everybody seemed to know who it is that's leading Ganon's army. Lord Drex or something."

"_Count _Drex," the knight corrected.

"Yeah, whatever. Who is he? And what's the Moon Guild?"

A glance my way, loaded with the implication that I had just asked him to explain Hitler or Osama bin Laden. His determined stride never faltered. "What do you know about the Great Defection?"

"I know . . . _of _it."

As we reached a new landing, Kael paused and said, "Did you know that moblins and bokoblins are not the only followers of Ganon?"

"Sure." Well, I knew it academically.

He nodded darkly. Lemon-colored light fell from a window and coated his peppered hair. "Many once loyal to Hyrule have been seduced by the promises of the Protectorate. Last summer, after years of stalemate on the frontier, there was a mass defection of Hylians to Ganon. The entirety o' the Eleventh Legion abandoned its posts and joined Ganon's hordes. Close to ten-thousand men who had taken the Legionary Oath turned traitor that day." He shook his head and grimaced.

"The whole fucking legion?" I marveled.

"Very nearly," Sir Kael shrugged. "The stories say that General Toma Ramsis called an assembly of all his troops an' announced his intention to defect. Supposedly, that speech alone won them to Ganon's cause. Those that refused to turn were murdered on the spot. No one knows how many loyal men o' the legion died that way. Hundreds, maybe. When the Eleventh tried to march north, the Ninth Legion tried to stop 'em and at least parlay. After the battle that ensued, the remains o' the Eleventh joined up with the mobs n' monsters. They became the Damned Remnant."

Wait a tick. I blinked and cocked my head. "Did you know," I said hesitantly, "that when you get talking, your accent changes?"

The knight looked at me coldly and chuffed, "I – well. I mean."

Then he growled irritably, "Aye! What of it? Does a Vale-born lad's mother tongue offend ya'?" The stiff, measured cadence he had used up to this point returned to his speech like a concrete wall. "Shall I speak as a proper knight, _sir_? The speech one learns in fair Hylium Town?"

I drew back, just short of terrified. "Whoa, whoa," I said. "Wait. I didn't – man – I was just _observing_. It struck me as weird, was all. I really don't care how you speak. In fact, I'd prefer it if you were comfortable. You don't have to put on airs."

Though it wasn't difficult for Walther Kael to compose himself, he clearly didn't know what to make of me at that moment. With a snort and a shake of his head, he motioned for me to keep walking. We descended.

Without prompting, Kael continued, "We should have been more cautious. We needed to be better prepared. After all, the Great Defection was not the first time the people of Hyrule turned against their country."

"Who was that?"

"The fairies of Kyr Colony," Kael said. "Right at the beginning o' the war. It shouldn't have been much of a surprise. Kyr were always rebels and rabble-rousers – goin' on three-hundred years an' more. They even declared their own kingdom a while back. One o' the Midnas kings had to lock swords with 'em before they agreed to come back under Hylian rule." He sighed. "It still wasn't at all good for morale when one o' the biggest and meanest fairy colonies in Hyrule turned traitor on us. And we only knew they had gone bad when they ambushed us at the Battle o' the Buttes."

"This is all useful, man, but what does it have to do with Count Drex?"

An annoyed glance. He said, "On the same day that the Eleventh defected to Ganon, so did thousands of other men. Mostly contractual mercenaries from Seamarch an' the Outer Islands – but also the entirety of the Moon Guild, a brotherhood of renowned alchemists. Count Drex was their guildmaster. He supposedly orchestrated the entire Great Defection. It was him that swayed General Ramsis and got word out that the 20th of Eldus would be the day to strike. When he and his lot fled Hylium, they set fire to their guildhall and tried to do the same to all o' the Easterly End. They failed in that, but most o' the evil buggers managed to scarper north. Now the word is that Drex and the Moon Guild are Ganon's idea men. They're the ones cookin' up berserkers an' redead an' hybrid beasts of all sorts."

I swallowed nervously and asked, "And he's the one leading this army that's invading Hyrule?"

"Perhaps." His expression changed not an iota. "Fact is, we don't know much about Ganon's forces – even after all these years o' fighting. Sometimes, it seems like they're organized on the legionary model. At others, they're little more than a roilin' horde. There's no rhyme or reason to their command structure. Only General Ramsis ever seemed to keep consistent discipline over the Remnant."

When we reached the bottom of the tower, the legionaries guarding its entrance gave Sir Kael a terse salute. He nodded silently to them and we went forth into the gloom-ridden halls of the keep.

As we strode through the echoing passages, I asked, "Okay – so, it's gonna be moblins, led by traitors from Hyrule. Did all the defectors get so highly ranked?"

Kael grunted, "Not all. Most o' the Remnant remained foot-soldiers. An' not all shared Drex's prestige. Some o' them have been executed by the Protectorate itself. Others . . .

"They say General Ramsis was promised a princedom in exchange for his betrayal. Instead, his head got displayed on a pike in Norburg Square. It was the Shiekah Shadow who took it, they say. Snuck into the camp of the Damned and sliced it clean off Ramsis's shoulders."

He fixed me with his granite eyes and growled, "And never was there a better piece o' filth for the pits o' hell!"

I managed a nod and said, "Fuckin' A."

"Aye," Kael said decisively. "Aye!"

"You've lost some people to them, then? The Remnant and Drex?"

Walther didn't even look at me. "Aye. Hyrule has lost some fine lads to those murderers."

I blinked and coughed, "I meant, um, _you_. Have people you've known been killed by traitors?"

I didn't understand what swam through Kael's expression in the next moments. A flicker of something that was quite visible, but incomprehensible. A series of twitches; a downturn of his lips; a ripple through his brow. It lasted only a couple seconds – and then he continued to stare stoically as we marched through the halls.

"Yes, I have," the knight said. His ponderous Hylium accent descended like an iron mask. "Almost all men of the Legions – whether the Twentieth or the First – knew men who have fallen to the bastards. Whether it's raids or ambushes or poison bloody gas in the night . . . we have all lost a few friends."

I could do little but nod soberly and continue the walk. We turned into a passage whose tall windows stared out over a patchwork courtyard unfamiliar to me. Topiaries rose like towers between walks of tiled white stone. The sky shone with a whitish-blue blanket of haze. Even in this seemingly idyllic hallway, servants sprinted and officials dashed.

Just as I was about to open my mouth for another (probably moronic) question, I noticed a hunched figure making its way along the right wall. Its form was periodically bathed in light thrown by the immense windows. His walking staff click-clack-clicked atop the marble edge of the floor.

Sir Kael said the name before I could even think about it: "High Sage Saharasla. An honor to meet you here." The knight bowed dispassionately.

"Oh ho, such manners!" the High Sage giggled. "Many thanks, boy. You shall make a fine squire, I think!"

Walther tried to hide his scowl and failed.

With a movement like a carnival tilt-a-whirl, Saharasla Minos turned my way and hummed happily. "Why, if it isn't the young fellow of the hour!" he beamed toothlessly. "A fine morning, is it not? Tell me, young master – what is your name? I am so very terrible with names."

I too failed to conceal my displeasure.

"Linus, sir," I said. "Um. Linus Olsen. We met yesterday?"

"Aaahhh, yes, yes. Old-son. Very true." The decrepit man grew a sly, slightly wet smile. One of his eyebrows bobbed up suggestively and his dusty mustache twitched like a push-broom. He murmured, "I would say that your test has come at last, has it not? Oh Hero?"

Something about that final phrase made my hair bristle. I managed, "Y-yeah. Looks like it!"

The High Sage gazed at me intensely. He finally said, "All the goddesses' luck to you, Old Son. This will be _your _hour, will it not? Come back to me and I shall teach you all I know of your destiny." With a wiggle, Saharasla grew a mad grin and crowed, "Off you go, then! Goodbye, Walther! Don't let those West Side girls get you down!"

Before either Sir Kael or I could give voice to whatever lingered in our throats, the old sage waddled between us and down the hall. A shuffling _click-clack_, _click-clack_ followed him like a tail.

Almost immediately – and wordlessly – Sir Walther took off down the hall. A bit more spring in his step. An urgency not yet hinted at.

"Hey," I sputtered, "wait up!"

"I have not the time for this," Kael grumbled. "Least of all for a sad, foolish old man."

When I had matched the knight's pace, I said, "He's not so bad, is he?" When Kael stayed silent, I lied, "I mean – he was pretty sharp at yesterday's audience. He really stood up for me."

Walther Kael chuffed something that was half pained grunt, half laughter. "Yes, I'm sure he did," the knight said. "Poor Saharasla's feeble an' demented as they come, lad. Might have been the greatest scholar in Hyrule once, but those days are gone. Want to guess how I know?"

I shrugged.

A pained smile cracked the knight's expression. "I ain't had West End girl problems for fifteen years and more. He thinks I'm still a boy."

This just made me more confused. "You knew him?" I asked.

"I met him a handful of times. Before I pursued my knighthood, I sometimes visited the palace with my father. In those days, the High Sage was old indeed, but had all the smarts an' wisdom o' Farore herself."

"Cool."

"Aye, it is a little."

When I realized he was referring to the weather and not his childhood, I had to stop myself from slapping my forehead.

We wandered into another set of narrow passages. These were far less ornate than other hallways of the keep. I wondered if they fed some kind of servants' area.

"So," I said. "Um. Mind if I keep grilling you? I really appreciate this, man. It helps."

Walther nodded genially. "Go ahead."

I thought about it for a second and then asked, "What about this 'Inner Council?' No one seemed happy to hear about that one."

"Heh," Kael ejected.

"What?"

Shaking his head, the knight grumbled, "Oh, it's just that a lot o' folk don't think that they even exist."

"The Council, you mean?"

"Aye."

Ahead of us, an unusually laid-back looking fellow in a cook's uniform pushed a rolling tray out of one door and into another across the hall. We paused to let him complete his brief passage.

"Do _you _believe in them?" I asked.

Kael rolled and narrowed his eyes at the same time. Something of a feat, I thought. He said, "Does it matter what I think?"

"If I'm gonna to be serving under you and trusting you to save my sorry ass," I growled, "then yeah. It does."

Something about this made him grin. Sir Kael chuckled, "I see. That may be so. Well then," he exhaled, "I suppose that I'm a special case. See, I believe that the Inner Council exists. I just don't think that it's quite the congregation o' poes an' demons it's claimed to be."

"Fair enough," I said, dodging about a stack of food-encrusted dishes near a doorway. "But what _is _it?"

Sir Kael seemed to search for adequate verbiage. Finally, he began, "As I said, we've never been certain o' how the Protectorate structures itself. We ain't sure o' how they even govern the conquered provinces. Most o' the spies we send north o' the Faron Bluffs either never return or get shipped back in pieces. Those that do return have little information on Ganon or his government. We don't even know where their capitol is!

"That said, we _do _know most o' their generals at any one time. An' we know they have some kind o' police apparatus for patrollin' the captured towns. We also know that the Protectorate military generals ain't the highest power in that land."

I shook my head, shrugged, and asked, "Do you mean Ganon himself, then?"

"Yes and no. We know that the Protectorate claims Ganon as its leader an' High General. But who's _really _runnin' things? And from where? We don't know. We've never known.

"Over the years, stories started to filter out o' battles and from across the frontier. Rumors upon rumors. Tales of a strange caravan that appears beyond the battle lines. A kind o' wagon train, dark an' elegant. There were stories o' things that emerge from those black coaches to _watch. _Things that are like men, but aren't. Creatures wearing the skin an' clothes o' Hylians, but are some terrible _other_. Then came the stories that these caravan-folk were actually commanding the battle, see? That they were the commanders behind the commanders; the generals above the generals. 'The High Ministers,' they got named. Soon enough, everyone was _certain _that they were actually Ganon's administrators and advisors. His 'inner council.'"

"But what are they?" I breathed.

"Oh," Kael laughed, "those stories are the best ones, 'cuz no three are the same. Remember – this is all soldierly gossip. Hurried tales told in the dust after a battle. Many o' the stories overlap or contradict each other. As to what the Council really is . . .

"Well, one story says that they're a lost race o' sorcerers come to wreak revenge on the land that banished 'em.

"I also hear tales of infamous monsters who once served Ganon. The sort o' villains they talk about in old stories o' the Hero. Supposedly, Ganon's resurrected 'em for another go at the man who slew 'em in the first place.

"O' course, some claim that the High Ministers actually wade down from their dark wagons and join the fight. There's talk of a 'Horned Man' – a black rider whose bow and spear are peerless. They say he was at the fall of Kakariko.

"Others speak of dire wraiths and one-eyed horrors from beyond the pale of creation. Horrors unknown to men since before the Days o' Fire."

"What about you?" I asked. "What do you think they are?"

"Listen, Mister Olsen –"

"Call me Linus. Please."

"Linus . . . I think the Council is real. I even think the tales o' its black caravan are true. But really? Realistically? They must only be men. A group o' smart, powerful men who realized that they could seize control o' the kingdom with nothin' but moblins and a rumor."

I stared at him, befuddled.

"What I don't believe in, Linus, is _Ganon_. I don't think some reincarnated demon from the dawn o' time is attacking Hyrule. I think that plain, ordinary men are behind this invasion. They knew that they could unite the moblin clans an' scare the piss out of believers with one simple word. 'Ganon.' I don't believe that this is an era o' prophecy."

To his credit, Sir Walther Kael spoke the next sentence almost gently. "An' I don't believe that you're the Hero. You ain't the Link to the Triforce."

When I stopped walking, I was surprised to see him stop with me. We stood at a nondescript junction, which branched off in four hallways that looked almost exactly the same. I breathed deep and smelled distant food cooking. Frying, I thought.

I nodded grimly and said, "I know I look bad out there."

"Many are yet convinced."

(Note that he didn't even bother to contradict my statement.)

"I really don't have a choice at this point," I sighed. "I'm in too deep. All the signs are there, aren't they?"

He shrugged, though not without hesitation.

"And what if I _am _the fucking Hero?" I grunted. "What then? I can't just walk away. If that's the case, then I have an obligation to fulfill what I was chosen for. There's no turning back from that."

"No, I suppose not," Sir Kael breathed.

I barely even noticed that I had put my hands to my head and was scuttling in a small circle as I jabbered, "I didn't fucking ask for this, man! I'm not some conman, trying to run a scam! Contrary to what Lord Cocksucker up there said, I'm not a fucking spy, either. What kind of dipshit would send an obviously _foreign _spy? Why not just send in a goddamn bokoblin while they're at it?"

Kael watched with half-amused impassiveness as I worked myself into a lather. "I'm not even sure I _want _this! Sure, it's kind of fucking exciting at times, but – Jesus! You think I wanted to come home sporting _this_?" I stuck my index finger in the arc of scar tissue along my cheek. "You think I wanted to watch Elkan-fucking-Fir-Bulbin's skin melt off while he was still alive? You think I fucking _want _to go into battle with fucking bokoblins and vat beasts and goddamn vampire people or whatever the fuck?"

"Linus."

"FUCK!" I screeched.

"Linus," Sir Kael said soothingly, "please calm down."

I calmed. Slowly. I looked at my shaking hands, half-expecting to find steam rolling off cherry-red skin.

"Sorry," I huffed. "Really. I – I'm sorry. Hell. This thing has got me so twisted up, you know? I barely know black from white anymore."

Kael nodded slowly and said, "Aye. 'Tis understandable." Uncertainty crawled through his features.

As we began to move again, Kael said, "For what it's worth, I do think you can prove useful during the coming scrap. The legions will fight harder knowing that the Hero may be at their back."

"Gee, thanks," I groused.

We actually strolled in silence for a time. Long enough that I wondered if my questions had officially dried up. Sir Kael and I actually made it to the grand, domed entry hall before I finally blurted:

"Oh – one last thing."

"If ya' must."

"What do you know about Zelda Imzadi?"

"The Princess's chief handmaiden?" He stopped and considered me. Dazzling light fell over his shoulders. "Ah, aye. I thought I'd heard she'd been assigned to serve ya'. Mighty odd, that. Didn't think much of it."

"Do you know her?"

"We have met more than once," Walther conceded. "Tall, pale Shiekah girl? Kind o' spooky?"

I nodded.

"Aye, then." He took a moment to think, looking down as he did. "Well – far as I hear, she's the Princess's favorite handmaiden. Barely leaves the girl's side."

"And?" I said, somewhat impatient.

"She's lived in the palace her whole life. Was raised here. Her mother served the Queen, I think. If she's who I think she was, Zelda's ma was just as tall an' intense as she is. Had these red eyes that, when she got to starin' at ya' . . . _voof_." The big man shivered. "As for her father? I think he was a knight who was slain in the moblin rebellion. He never actually married Zelda's mother, so it was a bit of a scandal when she was born. So far as I know, her ma never took a husband."

"Huh."

"Now, what was her name?" Kael mused. "Zelda al-Imzadi . . . Imzadi . . . ah!"

He snapped his fingers and smiled. "Impa! Impa al-Imzadi was the name. Gods, I had half-forgotten her. Brings me back to those days runnin' about the grounds while my pa drank with the other palace knights."

This left me briefly gap-mouthed. "Know anything else about Zelda now?"

"Gods, Olsen – you're not _sweet on her_, are you?" The knight looked genuinely concerned.

"Pfft!" I sputtered. "Of course not. She's just . . . I dunno. Impenetrable."

"So say all the palace legionaries . . ." Sir Kael muttered.

"What?" I said. "Wait – oh. Hahaha. Really?"

He shrugged and grinned helplessly. Before I could press my interview, Walther Kael announced, "I really must be off, Mister Olsen."

I nodded and gave him my thanks for the conversation. Sure, I felt more in the dark than ever – but at least he had taken the time to talk.

"Safe journey to you, sir," Sir Kael said. "When next we meet, it will be in the combined base camp."

"Heh. Yeah." My heart revved at the thought. I admitted, "I'm still fuzzy on what exactly I'll be _doing_."

Kael released a reflexive little laugh. "That makes two of us, then. I suppose you'll need a title or rank, seein' that 'Hero' probably won't do."

I conceded that it almost certainly would not.

"I suppose that I can call ya' 'Special Attaché to the Legion,'" he grinned.

"Does that even exist?"

"It does now." The knight's brief good humor faded. "We've three days and more to figure all this out, Linus. Leave the worryin' for the generals. I'll take good care o' ya'. That I promise, on my life an' honor."

I couldn't decide whether this pledge was actually reassuring.

"Ah – that brings me to my own question," Sir Kael said. He looked at me levelly and asked, "Can you ride?"

I faltered. To my knowledge, the last time I had ridden a horse was at Camp Sierra Springs, circa 1995. I had been shown how to saddle and mount the animal, then walk it gingerly around a corral. It was worth noting that I had been mediocre at all of these steps.

I almost lied, realized how badly that would pan out, and admitted, "No. I really can't."

Walther brushed a hand across the bristles of his hair. "Din's arse," he heaved. "I won't have any time to train ya', understand? You'll have to figure that out on your own. At least – until we arrive in whatever base camp forms up behind the lines. Gods willin', we might get some time to make sure you know the basics!"

We clasped arms then, his huge hand almost completely enveloping my elbow. Walther Kael seemed to smile genuinely, without the rocky veneer of stoicism and knightly fortitude. As if – I wanted to believe – he finally thought something could be salvaged of me. As if he had glimpsed a sliver of hope after a season of bottomless despair. He parted ways from me and marched through the doors of the Imperial Palace.

Through judicious questions and pure luck, I managed to find my way back to the guest quarters. There, I found Zelda waiting for me. She sat stiffly in the chamber's greenish easy chair, a circle of embroidery resting in her lap. Her lithe fingers worked the thread in fluid arcs and loops. Despite the delicate work, she still wore those flawless white gloves. When I entered, she looked up from her work as if I were interrupting something sacrosanct.

"Where have you been?" the handmaiden asked.

I shrugged. "This is a big goddamn place. Got a little lost."

"I see." She rose and set her sewing on the table. "No matter. You have arrived with not a moment to spare. You must ready to leave. The caravan destined for the battle lines departs forthwith."

I gaped in astonishment. "Now? Already?"

"As I understand it, there is not a moment to lose." A dead-eyed look, inscrutable. "I myself have already packed necessaries."

"Wait . . . you're coming with me?"

"Yes," she answered sourly. "I shall continue to be your maidservant until you arrive at whatever base camp the legions establish at Kerneghi."

"Shit," I murmured. "Shit shit shit. This is happening way too fucking fast!"

"Orders have been handed down, Mister Olsen," Zelda said dryly. "We must all do our part. Yours is to join a command caravan leaving shortly. It will join elements of the First Legion and proceed to Stoneheart Province at all due speed."

"How much do you know?" I choked. "About the offensive, I mean?"

"Everything there is to know at this point. News traveled quickly even before the War Council meeting ended."

She made a motion indicating that I should hurry up and prepare. This was somewhat baffling, because I bounded into the bedroom to find my duffle bag missing. I checked under the bed and back in the sitting room before coughing:

"Hey. Wait. Um – where's my stuff?"

"Your clothing and satchel have been sent to the laundry. I think we can both agree that they needed a good washing."

Undeniable, but infuriating.

I barked, "What the hell am I going to wear? I can't just buy clothes as I go!"

Zelda gave me an arch-browed look that clearly conveyed, _Look bitch, I got this covered._

"I have selected an array of outfits from some of the palace's reserve closets and arranged to have them transported with the command caravan," she said. "They are somewhat old and needed a good dust-beating, but I made certain to compare them to your current attire. You may not be fashionable, but at least your clothes will fit."

"So," I said, "why did you bother to tell me to 'prepare?' There's nothing to –"

Zelda didn't let me finish the sentence. Her voice was like an arctic wind as she said, "We are about to embark on a trip lasting at least three-and-a-half days. Though you will go by coach, I do not think it will be at all relaxing. We will travel fast and as lightly as possible. At the end of this road waits Harkinian Keep. The Kerneghi River Valley lies to its northwest. I will remain at the Keep, to await your return from battle. A battle with the concentrated forces of the Old Darkness. A battle that will decide whether you will live on as a Hero . . ."

She walked past me, hands pressed together in a spire of thought.

". . . or die as a fraud," Zelda finished. She hissed the last word like a gale scraping across a mountaintop.

I said nothing. After all, what was there to say?

Zelda al-Imzadi gazed back at me from the doorway of my chamber. She said, "I will travel by a servants' coach, but will be available to you as we proceed. Your own carriage shall arrive sooner rather than later."

Lower, darker: "I say that you must prepare, Linus Olsen, because the next days will define the rest of your odd – and possibly very short – life."


	35. 35

**35**

There was as little waiting as there was warning. Not fifteen minutes after Zelda briefed me on the journey, two palace legionaries appeared at my door. Without a word or a gesture, they escorted me out of the Guest Wing and into a businesslike carriage waiting in the shady courtyard. It was drawn by a team of sleek, wiry horses and bore the thunderbird seal, painted in silver.

The driver – clad in chainmail and a hilariously incongruous top hat – greeted me cheerfully. "Name's Clive, lad," he beamed. "Looks like I'll be takin' you up to the fight, eh?"

Clive made certain that I was packed into the coach's unremarkable interior, and then took his place at the reins. With a _Hup! _and a _Ho! _he urged the horses into action. Thus, with nothing more than the clothes on my back, the food in my belly, and the Master Sword at my hip, I started the trip that would take me to Stoneheart Province. Not even a day after I had arrived on its doorstep, I found myself departing the Imperial Palace.

Before we had even left the general vicinity of the Guest Wing, the carriage was joined by another of the same make and model. It fell into line behind us, clattering over paving stones in a cloud of dust and din. As we wove through the grounds, another pulled in ahead of us. And then another. It was a genuine convoy by the time we rolled through the northern gates and descended to the elaborate span of the Hope Bridge.

This was the bridge that connected the Isle of Kings to Lake Hylia's north shore. Whereas the Black Bridge was a dark, brooding span of rough basalt and spine-like ornamentation, the Hope Bridge was grayish-white and covered with countless intricate sculptures. The stone carvings twisted and capered over the bridge's railings like a nigh-endless parade of the whimsical. Lines of laughing children. Piles of bumbling octorocks. Men in armor dancing, arms entwined, with women in flower-bedecked gowns. Bearded wise men; contorted fools; jolly knights; twirling gorons. Sinuous figures whose joyous grins were filled with teeth like razors.

I couldn't say whether it was heartening or unnerving to reenter the city proper. A bit of both, no doubt. North of Midtown waited the patchwork district of Norburg – a twisty, unpredictable place that freely blended the commercial and residential; high class and low; manic and subdued. Here in the northern reaches of Hylium, tower-blocks heaved seven, eight, nine stories into the air. The faces poking from their upper windows watched our progress as if observing the funeral parade of some aristocratic race of ants.

These northernmost sections of Hylium were – as I later found out – intensely proud of their melting-pot district. Here, amidst stepped structures like art-deco cathedrals and bulbous minarets covered in flaking mosaics, the class structure of Hyrule underwent a sort of bizarre distillation. The rich routinely rubbed elbows with the district's poor. Neighborhood aid programs – paid for out of the pockets of alchemist entrepreneurs and landowners – maintained soup kitchens and work-placement services. The people of Norburg considered themselves more independent, socially conscious, and egalitarian than other Hylium-dwellers. They were proactively political and intensely devoted to making the voice of the common man heard. The majority of the capitol's print shops and bohemian artists' collectives made their homes in Norburg. Though it was the dwelling place of dozens of Counts, no noble Houses whatsoever broke bread there. Most of the displaced refugees from the war settled here, moving into tower blocks left empty by cryptic events still spoken of in shamed whispers.

Not that I knew any of that as I rode through the wide, winding streets that morning. I only saw pandemonium.

News of the offensive had clearly made it to general populace of the city. Putting it lightly, they had not taken it well. Perhaps the citizens still had the jolt of celebration in them from the day before. Perhaps the news of renewed war was like a plunge into a tub of ice water on a hot day: such a shock that the reaction could only be shriek and bluster.

All the same, the streets ran with the nearly panicked and the fully panicked alike. They raced like rabbits and milled about stoops in tight, muttering mobs. Women went out under the protection of their husbands or male relatives. There were old people gathered in forecourts, weeping openly. The Civil Militia was everywhere, obviously trying to convey that they were out in force.

I clambered over to the window on the side of the carriage and found a clasp that could open it. When I flipped the glass panel open, I smelled fresh, unpleasant smoke and could almost feel the vibrating tension in the air. Shouts and sobs and screams broke out in irregular bursts. The atmosphere reeked of dread – it was in the scents of dirt, cooking fat, tar, brick dust and book ink swimming through the place.

"Hear now, hear now!"

The cry came from a street corner, where a teenage boy in a blue tabard stood atop an improvised pedestal. From his splintery pulpit, the kid yelled, "Hear now! The King sends forth his legions! Brave men o' Hyrule march north to meet the threat o' Ganon! Read all about it in this evenin's special edition o' the _Norburg Crier_!"

Christ, but news travelled fast. It had been little over an hour since I had left the War Council's decisive meeting. Apparently, Hyrule's journalists (or their equivalents) had solid connections in the Royal Legions.

We skimmed Norburg Square – that great mile-wide plaza of sandstone tile and sculpture gardens. It was where the tallest buildings in Hylium grew: The Three Sisters, a trio of alabaster tower blocks that rose twenty stories high.

Near the center of the square, a gaggle of men had thrown together a half-assed bonfire. They hooted and cheered and passed jugs about their circle. Some of their number cackled and made unfamiliar but surely lewd gestures as the carriages passed.

"Ol' Daffy can suck my cock!" one howled. He couldn't have been much older than nineteen.

Then it was on even farther north, past the shadows of the Sisters and into the mixed-industry guildhalls of the Gulver Strip. Brick-bounded, undulating avenues. Cobbles the size of goddamn basketballs. Huge, extravagant spires sprouted from otherwise unassuming buildings. I caught sight of at least two graveyards, hidden and overgrown in the lees of crumbling temples. A small district where it always felt like twilight.

A straight-up mob of Civil Militiamen charged down the street in the opposite direction of the convoy. Some wore expressions of shock and disgust; others were notably missing the peaked helmets of their profession; still others were smeared with blood and miscellaneous filth. The Militia troop tore ass across the cobbles. Whether they were heading toward some domestic crisis or away from it, I couldn't say.

"Merciful goddesses!" I heard Clive yell through the muffling carriage roof.

As it turned out, the Lords' Highway picked back up through the drift-off of Hylium's northern limits. The caravan followed the wide road out of the capitol and into rural suburbs that spread from the city like dandelion pollen.

It was here, rolling past terraced farms and small manufactories, that the full Kerneghi-bound convoy took shape. The dozen-or-so official carriages were joined by bigger, rougher wagons pulled by draft horses and tended by men openly flaunting arms. Then came scores of cavalrymen – some of whom fell in with the wagons as escort and others who charged ahead, steeds as manic as their riders. Fairies zipped and whipped through the air, sometimes skimming just over the wagon drivers' heads. Mounted knights appeared between the coaches, their armor shining like frozen fire and starlight.

I caught my first glimpses of the Hylian grenadiers as they clung to the tops of supply wagons like rolling, armored barges. They were certainly distinctive in their starched purple and gray uniforms, huge backpacks, and notably nonstandard body types. Among them were men plump as ripe fruit and skinny as toothpick sculptures. There were clusters of gorons holding lanterns on the ends of poles, making them look like living lawn ornaments. Figures who wore slick, heavy, dripping cloaks wrapped over their uniforms could only be militarized zora.

All of this became a mobile assemblage unlike anything I'd ever seen. Though we were often left behind by the more tireless elements of the caravan, we were rarely out of sight of its influence. The dust thrown by all those hooves and wheels rose in coruscating towers over the landscape. The sound of its passage was a patchwork thunder. By night, the convoy's lanterns transformed it into a burning serpent surely visible for miles.

We left Hylium behind completely. Wilderness blended into wilderness. After dozing off for a time, I looked out the coach window with the alarming realization that we must have turned off the main highway. Now the line of vehicles and sentry horsemen rushed along the banks of a rust-colored river. The water churned and foamed about rocks like knife points.

I yawned and stretched and realized that I had absolutely fucking nothing to occupy my time on this trip. No books; no company; not even a goddamn Gameboy.

Well. Maybe I _did _have some people I could try to chat with. After all, I wasn't the only human on this coach. And there were plenty riding horses all around us.

"Fuck it," I muttered. I stood, steadied myself on the uneven floor of the carriage, and unlocked the cab window. I leaned out as far as I could, dust and pebbles doing cartwheels just feet beneath my chin. "Hey!" I yelled. "Yo!"

The coach hitched a bit as the driver pulled on the reins in surprise. His head whipped back and he shouted, "Is everything all right, sir?" He had to steady his errant top hat with one hand.

I attempted a goofy smile and said, "Hey – you mind if I ride up there with you? Did you want to talk at all?"

Clive blinked heavily and yelled, "Ah – why not? You can climb up here when I stop to water the horses."

So it was that I started rotating up to the carriage's backboard each time we stopped. During our trip north, Clive Kantos acted not only as coach driver, but also as de facto tour guide, local historian, gossipmonger, and roadie. When we talked, it mostly consisted of him spinning tales about whatever town or country we were passing through. To wit:

"That there's Kleiman's Rock! Were the head o' a stone giant that the Hero lopped off during the last go-around. You can see the eye sockets on the other side – or so they say!"

Or:

"Ah, Hester Town. They got this great little whorehouse down under the Roarin' Spigot Inn. Real cozy. I'd spot ya' a visit if we weren't in such a rush."

And:

"Word is that some kind o' dragon was spotted over these woods a few weeks ago. Had a roar like a castle collapsin' and wings twice the size o' this carriage. Nobody knows where it went. Some are sayin' that it was one o' Ganon's thrall beasts, out scoutin' the country. That makes a load o' sense now, don't it?"

He was the one who told me more about Hylium's internal dynamics, as he was a born-n'-bred West Side man himself. A self-professed street rat who managed to dust himself off and rise as high as a drover for the royal family. I shared a bit of Los Angeles with him, but Clive was oddly incurious about my homeland. It really was mewho did most of the listening.

And I could not deny that it was mighty country we now traveled in. Lanayru Province was indeed vast and overwhelming.

This was a land of granite buttes, bulbous pine trees, and old buildings wrapped in kudzu. Steep gullies ran away from the road. Everywhere there were signs of hidden villages, hunting trails, trading posts, game preserves, and isolated manors. Ruins dotted the landscape like old scars.

In the valley bottoms, ragged scarecrows loomed over fields green as malachite. Vines wound about fence posts and seemingly every home's foundations sprouted colonies of moss. Small armies of townsfolk and farmers would come to the roadside to watch us pass. Their cheers echoed like hallucinations in the sweltering air.

It wasn't until well into the first day that I picked out the coach carrying Zelda from the line. The vehicle was a huge, sturdy thing weighed down by a rope-bound structure of trunks, bags, valises, primitive suitcases, and even a pair of bulbous wooden barrels. Through the windows of the coach, I could see serving women chatting and laughing silently. When I caught sight of Zelda herself, she wore a coy, half-lidded expression that suggested she knew the answer to a riddle that no one else in the world could guess.

We were not separated for long. Horses needed to be fed, watered, and changed out. Cavalry escorts routinely scouted ahead for possible obstacles or ambush. Only the former ever cropped up – roadblocks of felled logs and broken-down vehicles from the legions moving north. All these necessitated breaks that could last anywhere from five minutes to an interminable hour-and-a-half.

Though the drivers tried to aim for towns and legionary depots, it was not rare to simply have to pull to the side of the road and take care of business in the dust. If a rest stop occurred outside a town like this, the servants' carriage would often disgorge maids and valets, who tapped the barrels on the back of their vehicle and filled tin cups with wine. They traveled among the carriage drivers and our cavalry escorts, offering fermented refreshment beneath the pounding Lanaius sun.

During these brief interludes, Zelda demonstrated an adroit hand not only as an attendant, but also as caterer, tailor, press coordinator (she indulged some of the townsfolk who wanted to meet the Hero), bouncer (and icily turned away others), valet, and a kind of overall road manager. I chafed against her remonstrative glares, frozen silences, and condescending fastidiousness . . . but even I had to admit that the girl kept my shit straight. For that entire trip, Zelda actually kept me out of trouble. It took me a long time to actually appreciate that.

In addition to all this, Zelda was, unsurprisingly, far more in tune to the logistics of the expedition than I was. She briefed me on the progress of the offensive each time we met – whether it was on the side of the road or in a market square.

"They are planning the coming battle as we ride," she explained as she spread a thick bedroll on the floor of my carriage by lamplight. "The ability to organize on foot is essential. There is word that General Baeleus's forces have already deployed to Kerneghi Gorge. Apparently, they fortify the area even as we ride."

On the morning of the second day, Zelda dryly informed me of the tactical situation as she handed me clothes from a steamer trunk. "The effort to retake Fort Tybalt is apparently a success," she announced. "The gap in the defensive line has been closed and any further Protectorate reinforcements have been cut off. Furthermore, I have heard reports that the enemy column has slowed considerably. Nonetheless, they continue to march southward in pursuit of our fleeing legions. New estimates place their number at nearly forty-five-thousand."

And later, on midday water break: "It appears that the survivors of the Eighth Legion will safely reach the combined base camp. One of General Fierro's Banner-Commanders, Oltho Tull, has been promoted to lead them."

On the third morning, as we shoveled down an inn breakfast of grits and cold cuccoo, she observed: "Their continued forward momentum makes no sense."

"Why's that?" I asked, a spoonful of hot corn-mush hovering over my lips. "I thought they were all about pursuing wounded enemies."

"Certainly, but only up to a logical point."

"Aren't they some crazy death cult, though? I got the idea from the bokoblins I fought that they were really just there for the chance to cut somebody. Aside from a couple guys who looked like they were in it for the money, most of them were pretty bugfuck."

Despite my colorful language, Zelda nodded in quiet consideration. She finally said, "The armies of the Protectorate do seem to attract more than their fair share of the mad and the bloodthirsty. However, their officer class is not to be underestimated. Brash and battle-obsessed as they are, their generals are not stupid. Even the most bull-headed commander of that column should know by now that his routes of supply and reinforcement have been cut. An army that size could easily turn back and smash its way back across the Faron Bluffs. So, why do they continue to march into what will obviously be a major engagement?"

"Maybe they're confident that they'll win anyway?"

"Perhaps."

"Hey," I said. I pointed my spoon at her, one eye cocked. "How do you know all this shit?"

Zelda smiled that weird, wide, half-mocking smile. That porcelain-white canine of hers made me oddly nervous. She said, "I make it my business to know a little bit of everything, Mister Olsen. When one serves a militarily minded King, it pays to know the mind of the military."

The trip north marked my first real efforts to network among the Hylians. There were plenty of opportunities to hobnob. The command caravan alone carried key clerks, cartographers, and quartermasters from the First Legion. There were plenty of servants – both female and male – and cavalrymen to talk to.

Of course, all this was much easier planned than done. Many still treated me like I was surrounded by a cloud of bad juju. Others were simply so flabbergasted by me deigning to speak to them that they didn't know what do or say. These were always the more awkward of the two types of encounter. At least nervous avoidance didn't end in more-or-less incomprehensible fawning.

I did manage to strike up conversations with my most common escorts: A trio of perpetually sighing cavalrymen from the First Legion. Allyn Croals – tall, sticklike, and proudly ignorant of anything outside the military. Kyle Estan – broad-shouldered, bow-legged, and an obsessive reader of Hylian "picture novels" like the one that had flummoxed me at the Imperial Palace. Burj Karo – a caramel-skinned goron, small of stature but a wunderkind of horsemanship.

None were actually knights, as I had first assumed. They explained to me (with slow, uncomfortable patience) that knighthood was actually a remarkably difficult status to attain in Hyrule. Though the title of "Sir" gathered respect and guaranteed social advancement, gaining it was a rigorous process that one had to begin in adolescence. Apprenticeships, multi-day exams, and constant service were just a few of the hardships involved. Most who sought the title did not attain knighthood at all. Those not weeded out by the exhausting path almost always took more than a decade to attain it.

Well – in theory. The King could bestow knighthood on whomever he wanted. This was mostly granted in cases of high valor, but it was not unheard of that influential families could sway a title to favored sons.

No: These fellows were volunteer soldiers to a man. All combat veterans; all Prime Legionaries of different cohorts in the First. All chosen by Banner-Commander Kael to ride with him in the coming battle.

It was these three amenable soldiers that I convinced to teach me how to ride on the second day out.

At first, they were more than skeptical. "Scoffing" might be the best word for their reaction when I revealed my brutal lack of experience. I eventually wore them down with appeals to honor, destiny, and finally, the safety of the army come battle.

They didn't really know what to make of me once their impromptu training began. Even the greenest volunteer cavalrymen came to the Legions after being farm boys, drovers, or deliverymen. Someone who stood next to a horse with a vague sense of dread was completely alien to them.

So they started from the very, very basics – treating me as one would a child new to the animals. We could only practice on the caravan's few breaks on the side of the road and in the evenings, when towns sheltered our resting wagons. Nevertheless, I made fairly quick progress. To my surprise, I actually had a bit of an aptitude with calming and communing with the horses. I started to gravitate toward one in particular – a gray-flanked, brindle-patterned gelding the Prime Legionaries called "Melark." This was apparently a joke among them, but I decided not to pursue what it meant.

We encountered refugees on the roads. Wagon trains and organized marches of townsfolk, fleeing from the encroaching horror. Ranchers led whole markets' worth of livestock south. Daintily dressed merchants and nobles rode filigreed wagons full of entire deconstructed households.

While most of the dispossessed wore expressions of determination and optimistic hope, others cast their faces down in tired apathy. These men and women almost certainly remembered the previous times they had been forced to abandon their homes to Ganon's onslaught. Another round was clearly too much to bear. Just as the more southerly townsfolk had done, the displaced raised their voices at our passage – but it was not always in encouragement or admiration.

"Are ya' gonna pay me for me house?" roared one dust-spattered man. "Are ya' gonna pay me for all those lost crops?"

The third evening out, the command group stayed in a nameless town centered on a huge sawmill. Bright alchemic lamps ignited at sunset and shone over the mill's stockade walls through the entire night. The smell of pine pitch and maple dust seeped through the window of my tiny inn room.

On that night, Zelda stayed in an adjoining room of the same establishment. Before supper, she insisted that I take advantage of the inn's perfunctory bathhouse. I gladly obliged her, as the road had left me feeling filthy and bedraggled as a boxcar tramp. Though it was a little more than a shed with a washtub in its center, the bathhouse did provide a solitary place to scrub off the dirt, give myself an uneven shave, and comb unfortunate tangles from my hair.

When I returned to my room, I discovered Zelda sitting on my bed. Her gemstone eyes roved up and down the object in her hands. The handmaid's gloved fingers brushed the dusty blue of its hilt, circling the golden Triforce as if it were a live electrical socket.

The Master Sword.

At once, I felt a bitter jolt of fear and outright shame. How could I have been so stupid? I hadn't let the weapon away from my side for more than a few minutes for almost an entire week. Now, I had lazily stripped it and its scabbard off with all the casual non-thought of taking off a belt. What if someone other than Zelda had come across it like this? What other hands might now grasp it to their chest as they dashed north?

And how much of the riot act was the handmaiden about to read me?

However, when Zelda al-Imzadi's eyes rose to meet mine, I found them soft and distant – almost entranced. They were wider than I'd yet seen them. There was a stunned, childlike aspect to the woman that was unnerving.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Zelda whispered.

Though she looked right at me, I could tell that she wasn't giving any thought to my presence. I was just a side-object in her present moment. A distraction to be considered with as little effort as possible. After all, she had much more important things to mull.

What those things were, I hadn't the remotest fathoming.

Zelda slid the sword from her lap and onto the rough blanket atop the bed. "It is imperative that you be more careful," the handmaiden said. "This weapon is undoubtedly precious."

Without another word, Zelda exited the bedroom with large, careful, exacting steps. She moved with all the graceless precision of a wind-up doll. The baggy sleeves of her dress swung awkwardly in the quickness of her flight.

"Weird . . ." I muttered.

During that fourth, last day of the journey into Stoneheart, Zelda actually joined me in my carriage. I think that she had at last fully embraced her role as my tour manager. Though she didn't say so, I suspect that she wanted to pursue the job more actively.

As such, she climbed into the coach without preamble and spent the day sitting exhaustedly on the bench across from me. Apparently, three days in near-constant motion had slowed her rigid instincts. Sleepless shadows stained the skin beneath her eyes. Though tied down beneath a habit, it was obvious that her long hair was succumbing to the heat and dust of the journey. Poky curls of it snuck over the edge of her brow. Beneath a halfhearted pall of rosewater, Zelda smelled of sweat and the cedar trunk she must have pulled her clothes from.

I can't say that sharing a carriage with the enigmatic woman was a transformative experience. As I goggled at the lakes and hills of the passing country, she busied herself with seemingly endless circles of embroidery. She would occasionally switch to mending clothes, reading from a thick book, or jotting notes into a quarto-sized ledger. All of these things were produced from a leather handbag that rested at her feet like a particularly loyal terrier – a bag whose capacity continually surprised me.

We spoke little. When we did, it was mostly terse and businesslike observations of the weather or clarifications of the day's schedule.

Once, when she pulled a quill from a pocket and began to scrawl over a notebook page, I asked, "Is it just me, or does no one ever need an ink pot with those things?"

Zelda did not look up from her writing as she said, "Pullo's Infinite Quills. A Blue Star Guild invention, if I am not mistaken. Quite handy." She shrugged. "Of course, they are not actually _infinite_. That would defeat the purpose, one supposes. Their ink supply has a habit of running out at exactly the wrong time." A shuddery breath. "I suppose that, even in this Alchemic Age, nothing can truly be perfected."

Then she fell abruptly silent, as if snapping shut a deadbolt on a carelessly opened door. Her gaze at the notebook in her hands was as intense as sunlight through a magnifying glass. Zelda returned to her steel reticence.

Fortunately, I had my conversations with Clive, lessons with the trio, and the endlessly unfamiliar landscape to tide me over – sort of. I only got in one ride up on the driver's seat and one rest stop's worth of time with Melark. By then, the day had taken its full shape beneath a shrouded, wispy sky. Light with a certain nether quality drenched the wagon walls and treetops. Without much warning at all, we had passed into Stoneheart Province.

The jagged splinter of Stoneheart Province connected Faron in the north to Lanayru in the south. A tiny, half-forgotten fiefdom long considered the ancestral home of Hyrule's most prolific kings. Some still referred to it as "Harkinian Province," though this was technically a misnomer.

Here was where the noble house had risen from, countless thousands of years ago – at least, so the legends said. Zelda pointedly mentioned that any historical event older than Ganon's last manifestation was suspect at best. For all she knew, House Harkinian had simply laid down roots in Stoneheart during the Lost Years.

This was a heavily forested region, covered from horizon to horizon in rippling bands of greenery. Forests of pine, slender maple, nomad spruce, stocky darkwood, and elfin groves of aspen occupied nearly every foot of ground.

However, this initial impression was misleading: The province was actually quilted with lakes and rivers. These collected and crashed through deep, cracked ravines that ran about the base of each hillside. When we passed through flat areas, low marshes and febrile wetlands sometimes spread on either side of the road. Silver skimmers – dog-sized spiders that appeared to be made of delicate glass – would flex and zip away over the surface of the water as we approached. The air grew noticeably muggy.

Some miles into the province, spikes and towers of rock began to pierce the forest and jut toward the sky. Soon, the country was so thick with the formations that it took on the aspect of passing through immeasurably huge and unfathomably ancient ruins.

To the west, a distant spine of black ridges appeared through the haze. A series of uneven, rocky fins that appeared undulate like the plated tail of some utterly cyclopean god-beast. Zelda saw my interest in the far-off shapes and told me that they were actually a short spur of mountains called the Silobar Range.

"At their northern curve, Kerneghi Gorge spills forth onto a great floodplain. The river valley spreads north and east until the edge of Faron Province. I am told that it's a fine place to hunt fowl."

"And it's where we'll fight them," I said.

"Yes."

I stared at the back-and-forth flanks of those stony hills and felt dread like a cannonball settle in my stomach.

Shortly before noon, the convoy clambered about the flank of a sizeable molehill. Below and beyond, the trees and towers of shrub-dotted rock spread seemingly without end. Then my view shifted northward . . . and I caught sight of our destination: The stolid, venerable fastness of Harkinian Keep.

House Harkinian's ancestral seat was the kind of place one might see in a fine dream or a terrible nightmare – depending on one's tastes. It was a dark stone pile perched on the edge of a scrubby bluff, towering over the landscape like the Harkinian legacy incarnate. Below its base spread a sea of trees like something from a fairy tale. Pseudo-Gothic spires rose from its parapets. There were baroque roofs of red tile and hints of the same kind of architecture as the Imperial Palace.

At the foot of the bluffs waited a small town with ancient foundations, half-buried by the encroaching forests. In the town's quaint square, we found a veritable festival of soldiery. While the citizens of the village (and presumably, Harkinian Keep above) had evacuated some days ago, the central gathering ground was packed with people. We discovered that the stream of legionaries and their hangers-on had chosen this place as a final pit-stop on the long journey.

The command convoy rolled into this gathering ground for one last break before the push to the legionary base camp. I had been riding with Clive during the last leg of the trip, so I only needed to swing myself off the driver's seat to place boots on ground.

Even though our carriages stood out from the buckboards, oxen, and groups of men in mail, few seemed to pay us any mind. Everyone had their own business to attend to, it seemed. Groups navigated the subdued bedlam with stony features.

Green spheres of fresh horse dung littered the cobbles in unsettlingly large piles. Insects of all stripes wheeled through the air as if at a carnival.

On the edges of the square, many of the shop windows were boarded over with raw-looking lumber. What few windows remained untouched revealed shop interiors stripped of goods. Empty shelves and counters scattered with litter stood as unnerving testament to the thoroughness of the evacuation.

A band of contractual mercenaries – identifiable by their piecemeal uniforms and lax grooming – had set up a cook fire in the shadow of an ornate but weathered fountain at the center of the square. Tentacles of greasy smoke swirled past stone faces. Noble granite eyes stared over the bustling plaza. A graven maiden tipped a pitcher toward the contractuals as they laughed and spooned stew from a cast-iron pot.

Our proximity to the battle lines was more evident than ever. Great pillars of smoke rose over the western hilltops. No men went unarmed; no women (save Zelda, it seemed) went unescorted. People simply stared northward from time to time, as if expecting a swarm of demons to descend without warning.

I stretched my numbed legs looked about as other occupants of the caravan performed similar rituals. Clive slipped down beside me, scratching at his sideburns, and said, "Hells, man. And this used to be such a nice little place, it did." Shaking his head, Clive slouched off – presumably to touch base with the other drivers.

The carriage door creaked open and Zelda unfolded from the inner compartment. That marble, implacable quality had returned to her features. Her eyes narrowed as she surveyed the crowds and refuse scattered throughout the square.

"Oy!"

It was a new voice, calling from somewhere at my shoulder. I turned my head to find one of the contractuals standing up from the spitting fire at the fountain's feet. He was a thin, bearded fellow with bright eyes and a certain hint of joy about him.

"Hey, you're the Hero – right?" he yelled.

Ah, hell. I realized that I had not remembered to don my cap that afternoon. After all, it was too hot and too isolated in the carriage to bother with it.

I said, "That's me!" It was almost automatic now.

Though she was still in the process of stepping down from the cab, I saw Zelda pause and give me a look like I had just insulted her grandmother.

The mercenary grinned, grabbed something from a basket sitting beside the cook fire, and leapt to his feet. His eagerness made the other contractuals growl with wild-dog laughter. Within moments, the enthusiastic mercenary had dashed across the square to stand before me. He cradled something gingerly between his hands.

"Here," he said. Despite his beard and the daggers strapped to his belt, I now saw that he was quite young. Probably no more than sixteen or seventeen, tops. The mercenary handed me a roll still radiating heat. There was a flake of ash atop it, but that didn't keep the bun from looking golden-brown and delicious.

"Thanks, man," I smiled. "Who –"

But the young man had already turned to sprint back to the ill-placed fire and his swarthy compatriots.

I gobbled down the sweet bun as Zelda took inventory of our possessions. For an amateur pastry, the roll was just short of incredible. Warm; gooey; tasting of cane sugar and maple. I wiped my hands on the knees of my trousers and spun slowly about, lips smacking, to get a better view of the half-abandoned town.

"No matter how many times I remind you, you will never learn to be more cautious, will you?" Zelda's voice was cool and flat and vaguely dispirited.

"Huh?" I grumbled. "What'd I do now?"

The handmaiden wandered past me almost idly, as if she was simply out to enjoy the plaza. "What if that had been poisoned? What if it _is _poisoned and we merely haven't seen its effects?"

"Um."

"It is likely not," Zelda conceded. "And I have a number of very effective antidotes stored for just such an occasion. But that isn't the point, is it?"

Part of me was _sure _that I could feel my throat closing up. Was my face tingling? Could I really be sure that I could still feel my toes?

"You cannot simply wander about announcing yourself as the Hero," Zelda continued. "Ganon has his spies too, after all. And Hylian contractuals are not known for their loyalty or piety."

"Wait," I choked. "What are you – I mean – oh shit. Is someone trying to poison me? Did I just get fucking poisoned?"

Oh God my heart why is it beating so fast?

"Well," Zelda said flatly, "you do not _appear _to be turning blue."

From his spot near the fire ring, the young mercenary waved happily. His comrades raised canteens in my honor. The wild panic seizing my heart ebbed, calmed, and transmuted into anger.

That heinous bitch! She was obviously taking pleasure in my baseless discomfort. Hell – now she had the temerity to be _smiling _about it! What the fuck was her problem?

So great was my rage that I didn't notice the new carriage rolling into the square, dividing mobs of stragglers, until it was nearly upon us. It was a much finer and fancier coach than those that had borne us there. Its walls were darkly lacquered and inlaid with byzantine designs of pale brass. A pair of hale, black horses pulled the vehicle. From a banner pole flew the purple and gold pennant of House Harkinian. The carriage pulled to a halt a dozen yards away, whereupon it was again surrounded by people pushing through the town and toward whatever highways led north.

I paid it little mind as I reared on Zelda and hissed, "That's some fucking sense of humor you got there!"

She gave me an impassive glance before gazing at the elegant coach. Absently, Zelda said, "It is no laughing matter, I assure you. If you do not practice better forethought and restraint, you will surely come to a bad end."

"Listen," I growled, "I get it. You don't like me. But I'm getting sick of these little mind ga –"

Zelda's hand shot up, index finger extended in a clear bit of body language: _Shut the fuck up a moment._

Her attention was fixed on the newly arrived carriage and its open door. The driver stood on the side-rail, squinting and sweating in the humidity. I now saw who had departed the vehicle: A bent, shaggy-haired crone hobbled among the milling troops. Her fingers were encrusted in rings and three layers of jeweled necklaces swung from her wattled neck. Eyes blue and milky as a winter sky. The black shawl about her shoulders was of lace so fine it was like dyed spider silk. She approached us with a cane in one hand and the other outstretched in greeting.

"Dame Harkinian!" Zelda pronounced. A shimmer of genuine surprise passed over her features.

"Maid Imzadi. Zelda," said the old woman. Her tremulous voice was rich with the quasi-Nordic accent of the King's family. "It is very good to see you here, even in these most perilous of times."

Zelda rushed forward with quick, tight steps. She bowed to the crone, who waved a hand and then beckoned the handmaiden closer. Up close, their size difference was astonishing – Zelda had to be at least foot taller than the other woman. Nonetheless, Zelda bent and embraced Dame Harkinian warmly.

"I thought you and your household had evacuated, honored mistress," Zelda said.

The old woman made a dry, reedy sound of dismissal. "Pffah. This is my home and our family's fiefdom. Let them come, if they will. I did indeed send away most of my servants, but men like Trevor," she indicated the coach driver, "have elected to stay. We will face whatever may come. But I have faith in the Legions, my dear. I've no doubt that they will turn the ruffians back."

"As do we all," Zelda said.

"I also wished to see a certain fellow rumored to be traveling this way," the old woman said. She turned toward me almost casually. "A certain _foreign_ gentleman."

I no doubt colored at that.

Zelda showed no hesitation in introducing us. "Linus Olsen – this is Dame Elba Harkinian. Aunt to the King and Mistress of Harkinian Keep."

Dame Harkinian nodded gently and said, "I have heard much about you, Hero apparent. Many rumors fly my way. I see that not all of them are fantasies." Her wrinkled hand indicated my ears.

"Um," I said. "Yeah. Not all, I guess."

"Then it is true that you ride to meet Ganon's horde?"

I managed a nod.

"Good, good," Dame Harkinian said. "It is high time that these days of prophecy run their course, just as they have so many times before. Who would have thought that I would see an age touched by the hand of the goddesses, old and feeble as I am?"

Zelda regarded the elder Harkinian gently. "They are certainly interesting times, honored mother."

The old woman fixed me with her faded eyes. She leaned into her cane and forcefully asked, "Are you a religious man, oh Hero? Do you believe in the goddesses?"

What a question! I wanted with all my heart to shout, _Who the fuck cares? There's a war on! _Alas, I was getting ever more careful with what I said. Instead, I coughed, "Uh. Not before I came here, lady – uh – Dame? – Harkinian. I'm getting to be a bit of a convert, though."

At this, she nodded appreciatively. "Of course. It is only natural. Tell me, my lad: have you been shriven?"

Zelda grew an unmistakably pleased smile. "No, my lady. He has not."

Oh, God. What fresh hell was this?

"I know that it is out of fashion in the capitol . . ." Dame Harkinian sighed.

"Ah, but I think it's a wonderful thing!" Zelda said with what sounded like genuine good cheer. "Please excuse my forwardness, my lady, but would it be out of sorts to use the keep's temple? Did old Duello evacuate with the rest?"

Elba Harkinian nodded vigorously. "Mmm, no. He remains. And I do not believe that this young man should ride into battle without good council, do you?"

The handmaiden pressed her palms as if in manic prayer. She smoothly said, "I think that it is a wonderful idea, honored mother. An absolutely _beautiful _idea."

"Indeed!" the old woman crooned.

Flummoxed, I said nothing.

Zelda said, "Shall we send word to the sanctuary? I do not want to come upon the honored sage unannounced."

"Ah, child," Elba Harkinian laughed, "I anticipated this need. I told Duello to expect you before I descended. Even now he awaits the Hero's arrival."

"Hey," I finally said. "What are you guys talking about?" Truth be told, I had started to sweat a little.

Both women turned my way. Zelda's voice was like cold fog as she said, "Sage Duello is a practitioner of older ways, Mister Olsen. Some might say _better _ways." Zelda nodded to the old woman, who in turned grinned softly at me. Her yellow teeth were like snapped-off cornstalks.

The handmaiden said, "Both Dame Harkinian and I agree. It would be best if I took you up to the Harkinian family temple to confess your sins."


	36. 36

**36**

A rainstorm briefly graced us as we rode the winding way up to Harkinian Keep. The sky expelled a few flat raspberries of tepid water and then brooded sullen and gray. It was just enough rain to make pine needles drip and the pinnacles of the castle glisten as if polished.

The ride was not long, but it gave me the requisite amount of time to frighten myself into tense exhaustion. My mind prowled and spun about what might lie at the end of this trip. This was doubly annoying given the relative innocuousness of it. A meeting with an old priest. Confession . . . or something. Nothing doing.

So why was I so unnerved? Why did I gaze up at Harkinian Keep and feel something childlike in me pull back as if burned?

We had left the town below Harkinian Keep not an hour before. It had been decided that I would briefly visit the storied Duello at the Harkinian estate's temple, then ride on to the final leg of the journey to the Kerneghi base camp. Zelda flagged down some cavalry escorts and convinced them to lend us a pair of horses. I was glad that I was able to get a hold of Melark as my mount, because the two of us had become acquainted enough that a certain trust had developed. Zelda herself proved to be both a skillful and elegant rider. She mounted with a swiftness that was almost coiled. Her use of the reins and her boot heels was stiff, calculated, and almost clinical in its precision.

While I had struggled into my saddle and reacquainted myself with the ever-patient Melark, Zelda directed some of the other servants to lash a leather trunk to the back of her saddle. It must not have been very heavy – the bay mare that Zelda rode wasn't at all annoyed by the extra weight.

"What's that for?" I asked.

Zelda made a noncommittal motion and said, "I too have need of clothes, Mister Olsen. Recall that I shall proceed to the servants' quarters of Harkinian Keep for the duration of these trials."

Before I actually mounted up, Clive Kantos had bid me a friendly farewell, grasping my arm with leathery hands and flashing me a bushy smile. He surreptitiously gave me a nip off a flask he kept under his chainmail vest.

"That's good West Side whiskey, lad," he told me. "I ain't ever failed a thing when I've had a bit o' that in my belly."

I thought it tasted like it had been dredged out of a peat bog, but just smiled and took another swig.

The rings on Elba Harkinian's sticklike fingers had jangled as she waved us goodbye. Her rheumy (and yet so sharp) eyes were bright even in the gloom of incoming storm clouds. Just before we turned our horses toward the road leading out of the town, I caught sight of the old woman making an almost reluctant sign of the Triforce over her heart.

My trio of horsemanship teachers had volunteered to escort us up to the temple. There was little actual fear of an ambush, but it paid to be cautious. I certainly didn't argue against it.

Now the three cavalrymen rode some paces behind Zelda and I. They watched with good humor as I nervously guided Melark up the sometimes steep road. Though they shared a few encouraging words with me, they mostly kept quiet. It seemed that the atmosphere of nervous anticipation had infected them as well. Kyle Estan kept glancing into the trees with wide eyes, caressing the boomerang strapped to his belt as if it were a rosary.

About a hundred feet before the summit of the bluff, the access road split in two. One path wound the rest of the way up to the front gates of the keep. Another hugged the slope and then plunged down through the pine trees, onto what looked like a spit of mesa jutting from the main hillside. We took the latter road, following it through the sodden trees and into a large, bowl-shaped hollow that clung to the side of the larger plateau.

It was here that the Harkinian family temple waited, nestled against a rock wall and overhung with a dense canopy of foliage. An obviously ancient, domed structure, the temple's foundations seemed to be held together largely with kudzu and moxy. Its walls and pillars were rain-eaten granite, obviously quarried from local stone. Before its grim entrance hall was a courtyard of gray tiles – all decorated with moss and spidery networks of cracks.

It would have looked like a decrepit ruin but for the obvious foot traffic that had scuffed the temple steps smooth. Fresh-cut branches were piled to one side of the courtyard. A gauzy streamer of gray smoke unspooled from a vent somewhere on the temple roof.

Our little band stopped just inside the courtyard. The horses clopped impatiently on the flagstones, clearly irked by the sudden change of terrain. We simply sat a moment and listened to the drip and patter of water through the branches overhead. A cool breeze swirled through the hollow, flipping about dead leaves like wet playing cards. A blue beetle the size of a coffee pot languidly opened and closed its wings atop the temple entrance. Its shell glittered with dots of moisture.

"This is an old place, isn't it?" asked Burj Karo.

Though I'm sure the question was more or less rhetorical, Zelda answered, "The foundations of this temple were laid more than a thousand years ago. House Harkinian has used it as their personal sanctuary for at least that long – save during the Midnas Dynasty, of course, when the family was in exile."

The three cavalrymen nodded appreciatively. "Very old, very holy," clicked Burj Karo. His flat black eyes blinked with slow wonder.

I stared at the stone pile of the building and felt that distracting, heart-constricting fear grow ever stronger. I didn't even know my hands had twisted around the reins until Melark snorted in discomfort.

"Are you sure about this, man?" I whined.

"Tis' only a shriving, man," Allyn Croals growled. "I did one once, before joinin' the Legion. It ain't nothin', man. Chin up."

Zelda nodded curtly and said, "Quite so, sir." She turned shadowed amethyst eyes on me and said, "I come here often, Mister Olsen. Once every three months, I make pilgrimage to this place and pray for the end of the war. Sage Duello helps me in the proper rituals and fasting. He is a kind, understanding, wise man. You will not find a better spot in Hyrule to be shriven and let loose your troubles."

I ran a hand over my brow and scratched the scar given to me by Lam, the moblin spearman in the service of Karrik Fir-Bulbin. I thought about actually confessing sins – something I had never had to do in a religious setting – and felt an unpleasant ossifying sensation in my chest.

"It will not take long, Mister Olsen," Zelda prodded. She cocked her head meaningfully. "Though I suppose that will depend on how numerous you_ true_ sins turn out to be. And whether Duello has any advice to give."

Ungh.

I turned my gaze from Zelda's disapproving expression and looked up into the dim entrance of the temple. I could just barely see candlelight flickering in whatever hallway was beyond the open doors.

How bad can it really be? I thought. Man up, Linus. Do this quick and we can get going . . .

. . . Straight into a war, the Other Me reminded. Straight into the mouth of a meat grinder. Anxiety swam paralyzingly through my muscles. I licked my lips, took another breath, and said, "All right. Do any of you want to come with me?"

Heads shook all around.

"This is a sacred ritual, Mister Olsen. A consecration not of men to the goddesses, but between men and men. A reaffirmation that the goddesses love us and in turn we should love and forgive one another," Zelda said. "It is to be shared between none but the confessor and confessing. Sage Duello will guide you through any questions you may have. We, however, must remain here."

Well, shit. Looks like I had to go it alone. I patted Melark's neck and swung down out of the saddle. The dismount was awkward and I stumbled on the second step, but Melark seemed to take it in stride. I appreciated the cavalrymen not guffawing at my fecklessness – especially since I had dismounted right into a previously hidden puddle. Cold water sprayed up in spout. I shuddered.

I patted the pommel of the Master Sword. Its weight was now like an old friend pressing up against me in reassurance. I tightened the cap against my head, exhaled, and walked to the entrance steps of the Harkinian family temple.

As I reached the base of the building, I heard Zelda call out, "You will almost assuredly find the sage waiting for you through the right door, just past the sanctuary! Be on your best behavior, Mister Olsen! And don't forget that the goddesses themselves watch you!"

Then I was passed through the heavy doors, and she was lost to me.

I walked through a short receiving hallway and then found myself in a sanctuary quite like the one in Oloro Town. There were pews arranged to either side of an aisle carpeted in worn purple fibers. Beyond them sat a familiar altar – a carved stone pillar, atop which sat a golden representation of the Triforce. A clammy breeze whistled through some hidden crack in the walls. Candle flames flickered restlessly at my approach.

"Hello?" I attempted. My voice came back to me in at least three distinct echoes.

No one answered. Of course: If the guy was in the back of the place, I needed to go that way. I started off at a jog, paused, considered making the sign of the Triforce, decided against it, and hurried around the altar and into the gloom beyond.

Here, in the febrile candlelight behind the pillar, there was a rounded space delineating the end of the sanctuary. In the center of this curved wall was the entrance to a back hallway. It was slightly sunken (no more a foot or two) below the floor of the sanctuary. When I stepped down into it, I found the passage's floor to be a rougher, more natural sort of stone. It smelled like rain and pooled candle wax back here. A scribbling undercurrent of ink, paper, pine dust, and old tea flowed on the air.

Okay – a door on the right, I considered. Well, there were two, actually (and three to the left). Each heavy wooden entrance was carved with ever-mystifying Hylian words. Ponderously large oil lamps hung from support beams. The amount of light they leaked was not commensurate to their size. I decided to try the first door. Damn the consequences.

Another step down led into a small, incredibly dim cell of a room. The stone blocks of the walls looked rounded and shiny with age. There was a single lamp in the corner. It burned with a weird alchemic spark that bathed the cell in a purplish-blue ambience. Low, splintery-looking benches were arranged along the bare walls. Above one of these – to my left – was a small arched window cut apart with iron bars. Atop this window was another golden Triforce, attached to the wall with a nail. It was not nearly as large as the one adorning the altar.

Yeah, this is probably the place.

Gingerly shutting the door behind me, I crept into the blue-soaked room. I was trying to decide which bench to drop onto when a voice quavered, "Please take the seat closest the window, my son."

I gulped, crossed to the bench, and started to sit.

"Wait." The voice issued from the window. I could now tell that another room, assuredly identical to this one, sat beyond those crossed bars. It was almost darker than this one. The light that pulsed there was lighter, quicker shade of aqua. "Will you not take darshan?"

"Oh yeah," I muttered, feeling my face go hot. I quickly knelt, took a glimpse of the Triforce, and made an approximation of its sign in midair. I slid onto the bench and looked through the window to the other room.

As my eyes adjusted to the eldritch light, I could make out more of the chamber beyond. It appeared to have the same dimensions as the one I occupied. I could now tell that there a hunched figure was seated to the right of the opposite window. Just a shadow, really. A dark, vaguely organic shape.

Ah, but I _could _see more of that silhouette than I had initially thought. I saw – with a strange clarity – the layered robes and heavy cloak that covered its features. This was a striking garment: Black as an ocean at midnight, but edged with masterful, coiling designs in deep scarlet and shining gold. A sawtooth strip of blood-crimson ran from the edge of the cloak's cowl and down what I was sure was its entire back side. I could just make out the faded blue and coral-colored patterns circling the ends of its sleeves.

Beneath this voluminous vestment, Duello could have been small or strong, obese or anorexic, feeble or mighty. It was impossible to see the figure's full features, as that uncanny cloak was pulled down tightly over his head and shoulders. Within the cloak's cowl, only shadows remained.

"Welcome, my son." I thought that the man's voice was low and slightly nasal. Maybe. He spoke so softly that it was hard to tell. "I am told that you come seeking council."

"So, is this, like . . . a confession?" I asked tentatively.

"If you wish," the figure said.

I gripped my palms together and asked, "What do I call you, then? Sir? Um. Priest? Father?"

The hood of the robes bobbed slightly as the man laughed. "Well. The preferred nomenclature is 'Sage' here."

"Sage, then?"

"If you must. Speak as you wish and however you wish it, my son. I am here only to listen, and provide what guidance I can."

I swallowed dryly and looked away from the sage. Out to the bare, slightly dusty floor. "So, I don't need to tell you about stuff like the time I spit in Carrie Monahan's milk in second grade?"

Another wry chuckle. "If these things burden you, then unburden yourself. Sin is the father of guilt. If you will find strength in it, let loose your fears."

I laughed emptily in turn. I shook my head and felt a thread of sweat run down my neck. "Okay," I whispered. "Okay. Give – give me a minute. I get it, I think. I get what you're trying to do."

Confession? Hell, this sounded a lot like psychotherapy.

Duello murmured, "Do as you must. We both have a little time before fate sweeps us on our way."

I pondered for some seconds. I considered the constricting contours of my hands.

"I guess . . ." I eventually said. "I guess I'm scared? Well, yeah. Of course I'm scared. I'm not really a fighter, right? I've never been in a real battle. I might have come out on top of some real bastards a few times, but _this_? Open warfare?" My laughter was bitter and mirthless. "Christ, I can barely ride a horse."

"It is only natural," said the cloaked sage. "It is something that all soldiers must wrestle with before battle. Especially their first."

A draft whistled under the doorjamb. The lantern flickered and bruised shadows speckled the walls.

"I'm not sure, man," I said. My eyes darted to the sage's silhouette. It was poised close to the grille on the other side of the window. Duello's face: still a mystery. I blustered, "It just doesn't feel right! All this fighting. All this bloodletting. I'm not sure that this is really what I'm _meant _for! I don't think that this is actually my destiny."

"We are all creatures of fate, son. Even the goddesses must obey its flow."

"Well," I chuffed, "what can _we_ know about fate? If we can't see exactly what the big picture is, then what good is it?"

"I suppose that that's one way to look at it. But I assure you that it is the _wrong _way. We all have a destiny, Linus. We all have a purpose in the plans of the gods."

I said, "And do you really think that it's mine to defeat Ganon?"

"I do. There are some who yet believe you are the chosen of the goddesses."

This actually weighed down my heart. Oh, you poor bastard, I thought. I felt my blood slow and my breathing go shallow. A protean species of panic stirred behind my eyes.

"I'm not the Hero!" I blurted.

A heavy pause. "Oh?"

What fountained up in me then was not quite the adrenal brokenness of panic and not quite the wholesome unraveling of relief. It was both; and yet, something else entirely. A terrified, ecstatic outpouring. A wretched torrent.

"It's a tattoo, man!" I hissed. "I – Jesus. I can't believe I'm saying this. Where I come from, tattoos aren't forbidden and the Triforce is just some symbol from a video – gah – I mean, a myth. A child's fable. I liked it and so I had it needled into my skin. I'm really goddamn sorry about that, man. Seriously.

"And the sword? Hell, I don't know. I just kind of _found _it, man. It may not even be the one! It may not even be real! I don't know, man!"

I sucked a wet, burning breath.

"You have to tell them! You gotta tell them that _I'm not him_. I'm not the guy you need!" I almost sobbed, "You gotta get me out of this, man!"

And then there was silence. Burnt-blue, wind-scented silence. The edge of Duello's robes rippled with another keening draft.

"Linus Aaron Olsen." Duello's voice was quiet but forceful. "Listen to me carefully: That is not true."

"What?"

The sage said, "You claim not to be the Hero. And yet I know for a fact that you are indeed the goddesses' chosen champion. In fact, I know _with great authority_ that you shall be the one to face Ganon in mortal combat."

"Bullshit!" I choked. "I – sorry. Sorry."

"No need for an apology. I am unfazed by such language."

"Still! How can you be so sure that some foreign asshole with a bad tattoo is your savior?" I grumbled.

"These things are not issues to me. Though the Hylian religion forbids tattoos, it also does not state whether the Hero's mark is gained by ink or birth. I'm told that entire dueling fields of study have emerged over these trivialities. Nonetheless, the Hylian people will believe in you no matter the breaking of one silly taboo."

I felt something like a trap door wrenching open in my mind. For a time, no air entered or escaped my body.

"Wait," I breathed. "You're not Duello, are you?"

It was a certainty so solid that it settled in the pit of my stomach like a lead ingot.

The shadow-form beneath the cloak trembled. It turned a depthless non-face to the grille.

It said, "No. I'm not Sage Duello. Though I suppose that I never claimed to be, either."

I realized then that what I thought was a male voice was actually very much _not. _Nor did it belong to a woman. It was a dim, flat, echoing tongue; a non-thing; an entrancing, fluid void-voice. It was as sexless and unidentifiable as listening to the wind.

How had I not noticed before? How could I have possibly thought the figure's voice had been remotely human?

My vision swam. The world seemed to fade just a little.

"Who are you?" I asked weakly.

"I am the agent of higher powers. And yet, I am my own agent. My purpose is to guide you toward your inevitable destiny."

The figure beyond the grate whispered, "I have come to see you and speak with you on this, the eve of battle. I'm afraid that a long, bloody struggle lies ahead. But fear not! This is the first step in achieving your destiny. The first mile on a road toward glories unimaginable."

"How do you fuckin' know I'm _him_, though?" I moaned. "Who the hell are you? And how can you possibly know?"

Its words were warbles of voice-matter, like bubbles rising from abyssal water.

"I simply _know, _Linus Olsen. I know in my heart and I know in my soul. I am a seer of futures and watcher of pasts, and I _know. _It resonates in me like a tuning fork: You are the Hero. You are the Link to the Triforce."

"Do you know the goddesses, then?" I laughed. "Got a hotline to the Golden Girls?"

"Of a sort," the empty-voiced figure said.

"Prove it," I tittered. "Give me one shred of evidence that any of this bullshit is true."

There was a pause, as if the cloaked creature were considering this. Then it said, "You were born in the city named for Saint Paul, in the republic of the United States of America."

I saw then, as through the pale depths of a fish tank, the skyline of St. Paul. I saw it and did not see it; I smelled it and did not smell it; I felt it and did not feel it. It was like someone else's memory of the place was forcibly wriggling its way into my skull. It was a disorienting, nauseous sensation that left me bent and breathless.

"You are twenty-four years old. You make your home in the city of Los Angeles – greatest of your nation, and one of the landmarks of your world."

Now came battering, half-blurred visions of desert hills; swaying palm trees; Compton tract homes; the sloped streets of Westwood; my own apartment's front door; the glittering, venal shops of Rodeo Drive.

"You labor as a clerk, of sorts. Four years ago, your father succumbed to a corruption of the brain and died. You still do not admit to yourself how much this damaged you. You live your life beneath its black shadow, toiling pointlessly and without purpose."

I saw and felt a series of nonsensical vignettes: Fields of wheat swaying beneath a cobalt sky. A rough tunnel descending precipitously into unknown darkness. Water lapping at the stone edge of a swimming pool. Spanish moss dangling from the depressed limbs of a willow. A troupe of men and women in robes, dancing about a bonfire. A sea of clouds, roiling and endless, as seen from above.

I gasped as the incredible, tactile visions came to a sudden and gut-lurching stop. "How – how the fuck?" I groaned.

"I know the way of worlds, Linus. I walk amongst them as through alleys between great buildings. I have stood atop the Golden Mesa of Kakariko and the slopes of Mount Shasta. I have explored the avenues of Hylium and Paris. I slip through the folds between these places as cleanly as through a door." That resonating anti-voice drew into a thin whisper, like far-off music heard through a cracked window. "Just as all of our kind can."

"This is a dream," I whimpered.

"No," the figure echoed. "It is as it must be. Not a dream, nor a vision. You are here. I am here. We speak as we must, bound together as we are. This too is the will of Fate."

"But why _me_?" I whined. "Why some stoner dipshit who was making a hash of his life before all this?"

"Despite your self-loathing, Linus, know that you have a brave, pure heart. You fight for what is just and follow your conscience, even if it is a bit withered.

"And despite the Hylians' feelings on tattoos," the figure purred, "yours was created in good faith, was it not? It is the symbol of a story you cherish in your heart. For all your practiced apathy, you truly believe in the values of the goddesses. You yet believe in the virtues of courage, wisdom, and careful power. From these points of light, you aspire to be a better man."

That elegant, bone-music voice whispered, "Let me guide you, Linus. Let me help you to become that better man."

"Help me?"

"Yes. As your journey wears on, I will inevitably make time to drop in on you. I will do my best to council you on the path of the goddesses' will. I will make clear the true purpose of your life."

"What about right now?" I hissed. "How am I going to even step a foot into battle without being killed? What fucking happens then?"

"That won't happen. Have _faith_, Linus. Trust in Fate to bring us all to our appointed places. Trust in the flow of destiny to lead you where it is that you are needed. You will be protected. You have my assurance."

"I'm not sure I can go through with it," I wheezed.

"You have already," it chuckled. "When you first pulled the sword from the Temple of the Great Sages, you made your decision. You cannot abandon these people now. You will see this through to the end."

I inhaled. I exhaled. I inhaled again and beat back the urge to scream. The figure shone with a corona of pale blue light.

"What the hell are you?" I whispered.

It answered, "If anything, I am a soothsayer. A prophet. 'Prophet?'" There was a grim, perfunctory giggle. "Yes. That will do. Call me Prophet."

I choked back a sob and examined how very near the surface of my skin the bones in my hands were. The patterns of light on the lumpy floor were also fascinating. "Right," I said. "Yeah. Okay. That makes . . . sense? But I was thinking something more specific, man. Who the fuck are you, really?"

"You shall discover that too, in time."

I heard a faint . . . _something_. The sound of cloth tearing, perhaps. Or glass shattering in a distant room. Or a piece of nylon catching fire. Something sulfurous and final.

When I looked up, the opposite room yawned empty. No robed figures sat there. Not even dust was disturbed to show where it had been.

I felt like I was crawling my way out of a particularly deep dream. The lantern wick popped and snapped. Brighter strains of blue swept the walls. My breathing was heavy and my temples were marshy with sweat. I painfully pulled my shaking hands apart.

_Bang!_

I nearly launched off the bench and into the opposite wall. It was the sound of a door being thrown open. In the other cell, a canted rectangle of light extended from the entryway. A hunched figure coughed and shuffled into the chamber.

For a moment, I thought that the Prophet had returned. Not the strange, windy-voiced creature of that late conversation – but a completely solid and comprehensible man.

"You should have called out!" the bobbling figure shouted.

I saw then the advancing silhouette was dressed in brown canvas robes and had a quite-visible face. A jowly, stooped man with a thick gray mustache. His voice was gravelly and had a hint of the Harkinian accent. "I've been expecting you, lad!" he said. "Now, I'm Sage Connor Duello, sir. Seems you ain't been shriven, and it'd be best if you got to do so before the coming battle. Don't have any time to waste, so why don't . . .?"

I had already stood from the bench and wrapped my hand around the hilt of the Master Sword. "Listen," I said coolly. "I gotta go."

Sage Duello was still lowering himself ponderously onto the other bench. "Good heavens, son! If you haven't been shriven, who knows what terrible thoughts will weigh down your heart in battle?"

But I was already in motion, stomping up through the cell door.

"Wait!" Duello cried. "Don't you want . . .?"

Then I was out of the hallway – into the whistling coolness of the sanctuary – through the front hall – out the door. My steps grew more reckless and rapid. My boots were on the flagstones of the courtyard before I even knew it.

A fine mist was sifting down from the sky when I exited the temple. Its coolish spray coated the back of my neck and beaded over the hairs on my forearms. A strangely glorious caress. I closed my eyes and luxuriated in it. A bird sang out lustily and was answered twice in kind.

When I found an approachably calm center, I looked around. The same empty, dripping place as before. Two horses were tied up at poles at the edge of the courtyard t. Melark and Zelda's bay. They both grunted sleepily and sniffed at pine branches. Where was everybody?

And suddenly _she_ strolled out from the temple wall, disengaging like a live shadow from its overhang. Another dark silhouette – now resolving into a pair of violet eyes, a dusty white dress, and a walk like a glass potentate.

Zelda asked, "Did you find it rewarding?"

"I don't know," I murmured.

"Tch. Did you tell him the truth in your heart?" She outright sneered, "Those things that might cause one _guilt_?"

I laughed. I meant it to be a wild, unkempt, renegade laugh of the sort that causes people to look about in alarm. I only managed something dry, cynical, and breathless.

"Yeah, I did," I said. "And you know what?" A flow of playful, cathartic rivalry bubbled up in me then. An unchecked sarcasm. "He said _I'm the Hero_! How rad is that?"

"Do not jest," Zelda said coldly.

"I don't, though!" I giggled. "The holy man pronounced me one-hundred percent, Grade-A, Gold Medal Hero, baby. The Cadillac of Heroes. The fuckin' _chronic _of Heroes."

"Enough!" Zelda hissed testily. "Sage Duello would never say such a thing, Mister Olsen. He is a scholar and a well-travelled man. And I know that he would take one look at your 'divine mark' and see it for what it really is."

All my bluster fled then, as if through a puncture wound just stabbed into my chest. Where were Allyn, Burj, and Kyle? Why had they left Zelda alone like this?

The handmaiden snorted in derision. She brought her extended thumbs and index fingers together again, sweeping them in a graceful triangle. "It's a tattoo," she growled. "To even the most casual believer, that is a grave blasphemy."

"How do _you _know that?" I spat. Only a moment later, I realized just how damning that sentence was.

She scowled at me, face just barely constricted, eyes narrowed into purplish arrow slits. "I am also well-traveled," the handmaiden muttered. "And moreover, I know a fraud when I see one."

"Listen," I growled, "I know that you hate me –"

"I do not hate you, Linus Olsen," she cut in. "Know that I never _hated _you. Hate this half-bright creature attempting to benefit from Hyrule's misery? Hate a man desperate – or mad – enough to ink a holy symbol into his flesh?

"No, Mister Olsen," Zelda clucked, "I do not hate you. Verily, I a _pity _you."

I stared at her, rage and defensive loathing baking off my skin. I barked, "Well, what the fuck? What now? Are you going have me arrested or some shit?"

"I could!" Zelda sniped. "Oh, how I could. But it would be counterproductive at this point. Even if you aren't the Hero, you can nonetheless prove useful to Hyrule. As a symbol, your presence will be beneficial to the morale of our soldiers during the coming battle. It is too bad that you will almost certainly die before you can truly rally their spirits. And it's too bad that you take the attention away from that sword of yours finding its way into the hands of the _true Hero_."

Should I tell her about what just happened? Should I be telling her about the Prophet? Oh Christ, I had no idea.

"Then why are you laying down the cards now?" I countered. "Why jump on me right this second? What's the point?"

The mist was beading on the gray folds of her habit like dew. Up on the access road, three figures on horseback appeared through a bank of fog. Our escorts lazily rode toward the courtyard.

Zelda heaved, "I want _you _to know that _I _know that you are no Hero." She whispered – husky as a rivulet of cigarette smoke: "For me, at this moment? That is all that matters. That is all that matters in the world."

I gazed at the towering, crystal-eyed Shiekah woman with jaw agape. Her shapeless dress billowed in another whirlpool of rain-scented wind. Behind me, hooves clopped on cobbles. Allyn Croals laughed at a whispered joke.

She smiled. With the cavalrymen advancing behind us, Zelda al-Imzadi let the edges of her eyes wrinkle and that huge, unique, slasher's smile fill her face. That same sharp tooth winked whiter than the rest.

And for a moment – just one mad fraction of a second – _someone else entirely_ was looking back at me. Some _other _Zelda. Someone who blazed dark and wrathful and hot as molten glass. Someone who openly relished my discomfort and pain. Someone with the joyous grin of a she-demon.

In that single moment, I saw a hellish stranger, bright and unforgiving as the sun.

Then it was gone. The cool layers of Zelda's original face descended like a wall, and that Other Zelda vanished in an instant. I couldn't be sure that I had seen it all. Nonetheless, I felt an alien kind of terror wash up in me. An inky, smothering fear of the unknown.

"Now," Zelda pronounced. Between ticks of the clock, she once again spoke with elegance and control. "I am bound for Harkinian Keep, where I understand many servants will gather to await the return of their masters. I cannot say how I will spend the time. Reading, I suspect. There is word of setting up a temporary hospital in the hall. It may end up being hard work."

The trio pulled their reins and watched as Zelda completed her orientation speech.

"These fine gentlemen of the cavalry shall take you the rest of the way. It should not be much more than three or four hours' ride. There you shall be remitted to the command of Banner-Commander Walther Kael and General Alexander Tolskai of the Third Legion. As I understand it, you are to ride with Sir Kael himself – in his command unit."

"How the fuck do you know all this?" I chuffed.

"Mister Olsen . . ." Zelda said slowly, ". . . this is my duty. This is my job. It is my business to know."

She crooned, "If you return, I will again be at your disposal. _If _you return!"

The handmaiden clasped her hands, raised her eyebrows mockingly, and bowed. Her blonde braid whipped about as she turned. By then, the legionaries were already encouraging me onto Melark.

I was only able to get one last look at Zelda's receding form as she crossed the damp courtyard. Was I imagining the jaunty spring in her step? Did I mistake the triumph in the snakelike bounce of her braid?

She reached the stairs to the temple and turned back to watch us leave. That was the image of her that embedded itself, as if barbed, into my heart: A smile more serene than the Mona Lisa's; a body straight and stiff as a statue; eyes as enigmatic as an angel's. She tipped her head haughtily to me and then disappeared through the temple doors.


	37. 37

**37**

The last leg of the journey to Kerneghi Gorge took just under four hours to complete. We proceeded away from the hollow and the temple that dwelt there. The cavalrymen led me on a path that led under the bluffs and back into the woods. From there, we discovered a ragged track that wound northwest.

This final ride took us through some fairly spooky territory. The road ran through thick forests pinned in by cliffs. Even in the afternoon, these narrow gullies and scrub woods were gloomy and claustrophobic. One got the feeling that this part of the world was not well-populated even without a major battle threatening to take place in it.

Alas, the unnerving landscape was the least of my worries. My mind kept crawling back to what had happened at the Harkinian estate's temple. The strange, hypnotic words of the Prophet. Those reassurances that I was indeed the instrument of Fate and of the goddesses. That twilit figure's abrupt, total disappearance from the world. The sense that it had all been a kind of visceral hallucination.

And then there had been Zelda's sudden, open antagonism. Rage and hatred blooming brilliantly from what had seemed playful disdain on the road. Just what had I glimpsed lurking beneath her features? Had it been some new face, to be swapped out casually as a masquerade costume? Or had it been something rawer and more elemental?

_I want _you_ to know that _I_ know that you are no Hero. For me, at this moment? That is all that matters. That is all that matters in the world._

I had no idea about any of it. These new doubts gnawed at me like a pack of scabrous rats.

The four of us ended up falling in with another group of cavalrymen heading along the same rough road. They were a dirty, exhausted-looking bunch that said they were originally from the Fourteenth Legion. They had been deployed on the King's orders and had spent the last few days making lightning raids on the flanks of the enemy troop column.

"Bloody snouts are better shots than they used to be, I swear," grumbled one youth, whose ear was hastily bandaged and whose face was damned near black beneath layers of dust and soot.

Thus grouped, we rode off the beaten track and up a canyon path. Rough, wind-carved columns of ivory-colored rock rose up around us. Ropy trees clung to the canyon walls like barnacles. After ascending through this tough, twisted corridor, we arrived at a rolling length of prairie. After a moment of surprise, I realized this was actually the summit of a mesa, previously hidden as we had climbed up its flanks. It was here that we finally saw the base camp of Hyrule's Royal Legions.

The camp was a sudden city, appearing across the mesa-top like a particularly titanic and vibrant fungal colony. Hundreds of cubical white tents – their roofs topped with billowing canvas domes – spread out in orderly lines from a central hub filled with mad activity. This circular plaza at the heart of the encampment was clear of any normal tents. In their place were set up a half-dozen much larger and more imposing structures: massive pavilions, held up with timber support beams and flying the flags of Hyrule and its noble houses. Each was large enough to hold a respectable circus.

Scattered throughout the entire camp were wagons, buckboards, and rough, cabin-like structures that exuded constant clouds of steam and smoke. Impromptu stables and corrals divided the long lines of tents, giving them the look of brackets holding together the spokes of this great wheel. Smoke drifted from at least a hundred fires, rising and mixing above the base camp like some benevolent apparition.

"Ain't that a beauty?" Kyle Estan marveled. "Never thought the sight o' thirty-thousand lads would be so welcome."

"Don't suppose we can get a bath down there?" one of the men of the Fourteenth groused.

"Nayru's tits, man," Allyn Croals grinned. "I'd be surprised if there ain't already a whorehouse built down there. I bet they can spare a cookin' pot for a few baths!"

By then, the incessant cloud cover had stopped its lazy threats of rain and was starting to burn off altogether. The sun shone down ever stronger and more golden. As we rode down off the lip of the mesa and toward the rings of sentries manning the camp pickets, shafts of brilliant, wheat-colored light sliced down from the sky. They painted the base camp in great pools of luminescence and rippling shadow.

After a brief bit of dickering with the jittery, heavily-armed sentries, we were given entrance to the camp proper. Here my teachers and I parted ways with the lads of the Fourteenth. We were bound for the tent of Sir Walther Kael and they had to go find out which of the four major Legions they would be assigned to for the coming battle. The filthy cavalrymen rode off with well-wishes and calls for good luck on their tongues.

The camp was even more tense and chaotic than it had seemed from a distance. There was an incessant, crashing din about the place: Hammers rang on stakes, nails, and armor. Commands were shouted and clarifications yelled in response. Swords and pikes clashed on muddy, improvised practice grounds. A big-bellied goron sergeant bellowed challenges to green recruits. Fire pits popped – sparking, shuddering, and roaring up with each new handful of wood. Steam hissed like a startled cat as hot steel met cold water. Horses whinnied and stamped their hooves impatiently. Oxen grunted, bellowed, and shat with fright. The hummingbird thrum of wing beats followed fairies as they zoomed here, there, everywhere.

The place stank of hastily dug latrines, burnt stew, trampled grass, lamp oil, and that sour reek that accompanies true, unshakable fear. Wood smoke stung my eyes and made my throat feel raw. I would come to be rather familiar with the scents of various varieties of animal shit.

Despite all this, it was fascinating to observe a settlement that had sprung up in its entirety over the course of a few days. Last week, there had been nothing here but meadow and mountaintop. Now there stomped a city of thousands – all with a singular purpose lockstep in their minds.

There were already streets, intersections, squares, and clearly delineated districts. Mess tents bustled like restaurants and lines snaked out from the shacks thrown together over latrine pits. Legionaries had begun to customize their temporary canvas homes with graffiti, charms tied to tent poles, and sloppy signs painted on driftwood.

My escorts took directions from banners posted throughout the streets and narrow aisles of the encampment. These multicolored signposts apparently pointed the way through the maze of different legions, cohorts, and individual squads of soldiers. After working our way deep into the camp – damned near to the central pavilions and the tumult within – we entered a section clearly devoted to the cavalry. Blacksmiths were set up in open, circular yards scraped clean of any vegetation. Squat cast-iron furnaces and brick fire-pits blazed pulsing pillars of heat and smoke into the deepening sky. Hammer-blows rang on and on and on. Waist-high piles of horseshoes sat on the edges of these forge-yards. Up ahead, I could just see one of the many corrals set up throughout the camp, milling with dozens of war horses.

"Ho, gents," Allyn smirked. "This here's our new home for the time bein'. Best get the horses situated and then find the Banner-Commander's tent to report in."

The four of us dropped off our mounts with a scowling, half-elderly corral-master and his ink-stained quartermaster. On foot again, we tromped through the smoky light of late afternoon and into the section of camp devoted to the Third Legion.

We found Sir Walther Kael's command tent all but abutting the central plaza. It was a big, grandiose affair flanked by legionary banner-poles and decorated with precise, undoubtedly bellicose slogans in red and black paint. Two of the tent's sides had been rolled up and lashed to the top supports, so it was easy enough to pick out Sir Kael himself from the distance.

As we approached, Walther was stooped over a rough-and-tumble conference table thick with parchment, quills, and the same kind of black and red tactical markers used during the War Council meeting. A number of weapons (daggers, arrows, and a lonely-looking boomerang) were scattered about the table – apparently being used as paperweights. The knight himself squinted at a memo in his hand, which had clearly been scrawled on another page entirely and then torn off its corner. One hand absently scratched at the black stubble coating his rocky chin. Dust-gray sweat oozed over his features and the collar of his legionary uniform sat open.

The three cavalrymen walking with me doubled their pace to get ahead. They stopped stiffly before the open flaps of the command tent and threw up their fists in legionary salute.

"Banner-Commander Kael!" Allyn barked. "Prime Legionaries Croals, Karo, and Estan: reporting for reassignment and duties, sir!"

Despite the suddenness of Allyn's announcement, Walther looked up from his vexing note quite slowly. He blinked at the newcomers sourly, nodded, and said, "Fine to see you, Prime Legionary Croals. I expected you some hours ago. I heard a rumor that you weren't far off."

Allyn swallowed and said with a wobbly voice: "I – beg pardon, Banner-Commander. We got a bit side-tracked, sir. Dropped by a temple at the Harkinian place so the Her – I mean, _Mister Olsen_ could get a confession."

Kael's eyebrow rose quizzically. He looked past the shoulders of the cavalrymen and settled on me. A brief smirk worked its way over his lips before being beaten down by his usual dour expression.

"In the future, I would prefer a message be sent to me at such an occasion," he said. "It matters not, now – get settled and report back to me in an hour for cohort assignment. Despite present circumstances, this grand army of ours is still finding its legs. You are dismissed."

"Sir!" all three horsemen cried. Their fists flew out diagonally. They each took my arm in turn, bid me good luck, and went ambling up the rows of tents.

Sir Walther Kael strode out to meet me. He grasped my elbow and growled, "Give confession, eh? You're either a brave man or a stupid one. Or one with a clear conscience, one supposes." Kael chuckled. "It is good to see you here. Well met, Linus Olsen."

"Good to see you too, man," I said – and found myself surprised to mean it.

The knight beckoned me into the slightly cooler confines of the command tent. There were low canvas and wood-frame chairs about the central table. A frayed red rug covered the floor of the tent. Other road-battered bits of furniture lined the walls – writing desks, heavy cabinets, and even a wash stand.

There was a large, mandala-like design painted in coruscating red and black on the back wall. In the orchid-shape at its center was a single Hylian character, stenciled in bright scarlet. After Sir Kael motioned for me to sit, I stared at this striking design with obvious fascination.

"Do ya' know your numbers?" he asked. He tilted his chin at the Hylian symbol.

I shook my head. "Not Hylian ones," I admitted. "I'm fine back home. Completely different writing system."

"Strange," Kael said absently. "Well that one's '25.' As in 'the 25th Cohort o' the Third Legion.' Which is actually who you will be joining, shortly."

I apparently couldn't cover up the helpless shiver that ran through my body. Walther Kael emitted a dark laugh and said, "Don't worry about it, Olsen. I make it sound more dramatic than it is. We ain't draftin' ya'. After all," he snickered, "that'd be against the law."

"So what happens now?" I asked.

"Like I said in Hylium – _Special Liaison_. I actually managed to push that one through. You will join me in the Command Squad of the 25th Cohort, which is the head Cohort of all other cavalry units in the Third Legion."

"Uh huh."

"During the battle – or goddesses help us, _battles_ – ahead, you'll ride with me. Just stick close to me, don't try anything fancy, and I'll bring you home alive." Kael nodded decisively.

"Um," I replied, "what exactly does that mean?"

"You ain't gonna have to _do _anything, Linus. Just stay in the saddle, strike a pose with that sword of yours when the need arises, and avoid gettin' killed. Beggin' your pardon, lad, but you're worth a sight more to us as a rallyin' cry than a soldier. If you die, then you ain't the Hero. If you're alive – well, the question gets in our lads' minds. Maybe you _are_ the chosen Hero, they think. And if they think they're fightin' alongside the Link to the Triforce, I guarantee you they'll fight ten times as hard to stay alive."

Yeesh. At least it made a modicum of sense. And it wasn't as if I disagreed with the Army of Hyrule's conclusions about me.

"When is it happening?" I asked. "The battle, I mean. When do we fight?"

Sir Kael grabbed a mug of water from the paper-laden table. He scowled and slurped from its fired clay rim. "We don't know yet," the knight sighed.

"Are they really that far away?"

"No," he breathed. "They're already here."

"What." He didn't say anything. "No – fucking – seriously! What?"

Kael nodded in a vaguely westerly direction. "They've been over there, on the other side o' the gorge, for half a day. We thought they'd attack as soon as they arrived. We were ordered to battlements and prepared for the assault. Instead, we watched as the mobs started to dig fortifications."

I gaped, staring over the mesa-top and into stands of scrub brush, as if I could suddenly magically see the lurking invaders. "And . . .?" I managed.

"They're waitin'."

"For what?" I gulped. "Do they want _us _to attack?

"Nay. It ain't serious defenses they're buildin' – just pickets an' a few guard posts. I think that they're actually waitin' for the rest of us to get here and join the combined army."

Kael gave me a morbid, joyless smile. "I think they want a fair fight."

This settled over my shoulders like a cloak made of tar. I could feel the extra air on my wrenched eyeballs and the wet heat of the breath stagnating in my lungs.

"So any moment then," I said wispily.

"Aye," Kael shrugged. "I suppose. But I still think they'll wait for all o' us arrive. Then they'll march in strength."

A curious, determined look dawned on Sir Kael's face. He abruptly stood and placed his mug back on the table with a hollow _thud_. Without any other warning, he said, "Ride with me, Linus. You should probably see this for yourself."

So it was: Sir Walther Kael and I retrieved horses from the 25th Cohort's corral. I managed to convince Kael to allow me to use Melark, as I anxiously distrusted most all of the other horses. Then we set out west, he leading, until we had gone past the camp pickets and out into sweet-and-wet-smelling wilderness.

It wasn't a long ride. In fact, it was a distressingly short one. No more than a half-mile through stands of aromatic scrub bushes and up a gentle ridge that screened the mesa-top from the west. Atop this hill – as the sun was starting to set and the middle-distant haze rendered everything slightly impressionistic – I got my first view of Kerneghi Gorge.

Several miles south, the volcanic black crags of the Silobar Range bulged out and abruptly stopped. From their stony maw yawned a massive canyon, which clearly worked its way back southward, deep into the Silobar. White whorls of splash and spray were turning to soft fire in the descending sun. As it ran northward, the great crack opened up gradually and its jagged sides grew smoother. It was a true gorge for some distance – and then even this became gentle, until the waterway's walls were more like the steep slopes of foothills. It was at this place, atop the eastern bank of the settling quasi-gorge, on which the two of us now sat.

Between the two slopes lay a surprisingly wide swath of flat valley bottom. The Kerneghi River sluiced through the rocks of the southerly canyon and widened as its basin did the same. By the time the river passed us, it had diminished from the raging torrent of the canyon mouth to a fat, smooth, calm, flow that looped back and forth across the valley in lazy braids. Farther to the north, the river all but vanished as it spread into branching creeks, standing pools, and stretches of lush marshland. The surface of all that water was slowly ripening into the fine, shimmery color of beaten gold.

A marshy, fecund scent rose from the gorge and traveled on the muggy breeze like an invitation. The bottom of the gorge was filled with valley land rich and green as the Gardens of Babylon. Where the river touched and its tributaries tickled, great stands of tall marsh grass, swaying reeds, and islands of bright moss sprung up. Clumpy groves of willows, aspen, and oak grew in abundance. Among them were even stranger trees – ones with corkscrew trunks and others with spherical canopies of leaves so dark they were almost blue. As I watched, a pair of immense white cranes took flight from one of the closest fields of reeds.

It was a vaster, more open place than I had pictured from the descriptions I had been given. This fertile, waterlogged plain spread one to two miles between either side of the diminishing gorge.

The horses were nervous here. Their ears flicked constantly and Melark would continually cast his gaze southwest, as if he sensed something there that was elementally upsetting. The gelding chuffed and stamped a hoof on the yellow-green grass of the ridge top. I attempted to pat his neck for comfort and felt only iron-tense horseflesh beneath my fingers.

Sir Kael leaned forward in his saddle and swept a hand over the length and breadth of the gorge.

"Across this valley," he said, pointing straight west, to the gorge's opposite lip, "are at least forty-thousand Protectorate troops. Within the next two days, they will attempt to cross that space. At that time, our combined legionary army will move to meet them. We shall check their advance and then throw it back. Should we be in any shape to do so, we are ordered to pursue and annihilate all retreating men. Prisoners are to be taken only if they are provable worth. King Daphnes ain't faffin' about on this one.

"Between us an' them there's the river. It's so shallow that it won't but slow 'em down, but it's enough of an obstacle that it'll make their crossin' all the harder."

"Can't they just go north?" I asked. "Cross where the river peters out?"

Kael said, "Nay. It's all swamp and mud flat up there, unless they want to loop all the way back into Faron Province. If they tried that, we'd know within minutes, an' they'd lose any kind o' tactical advantage." He laughed, "Besides, that'd be too much like a retreat for the snout bastards. No: they'll cross here. Across this broad patch o' the valley. And they'll let us know exactly where they plan to do it, because they want a straight-up scrap this time."

He favored me with a vaguely ironic look. "At least that's the runnin' theory."

I squinted and tried to make out the other side of the gorge. So far as I could tell, it was a bit rockier over there. Actual lips of black stone ran like casements over the opposite ridge. Beyond were heavily forested foothills and mesas that I couldn't quite make out.

"I can't see anyone over there," I muttered. It didn't help that I had the sun in my eyes.

"Oh, they're there. Trust me."

The knight fished into his saddle bag and delicately brought out a thick leather tube. He undid the clasp on one end and removed something from within: a lengthy brass cylinder. Both ends shone with curved glass. Though it took me a moment, what it was finally struck me: A telescope.

Sir Kael gingerly handed me the heavy instrument. "Here. Try this. Put it to your dominant eye and close the other," he instructed.

Thank you, Walther, I thought bitterly. I'll be sure not to mishandle this precious spy technology. I squeezed shut my left eyelid and placed the scope to its appointed spot.

It turned out to be much higher-powered than I had first imagined. Its compact, slightly bulbous lens gave me a rather clear view of the ridgeline on the opposite side of the valley. I saw individual copses of pine trees and could make out splashes of lichen on outcroppings of basalt.

But also . . .

I squinted, pulled the scope up a bit, and let it rove southward. And then I saw them. My breath caught and my tongue went dry as a ditch.

Silhouetted against the bloated, haze-reddened disc of the sun were dozens of scuttling figures. They appeared at first as bulbous insects trundling along a two-dimensional landscape. Then I could see individual forms outlined against the dusk-burnt sky: Hunched shoulders; dome-like helmets bolted into plate armor; spear points; flowing capes; the white glints of tusks. Moblins ran hither and yon with lumber and tools weighing down their arms. Among them moved taller figures – Hylians sporting patchwork armor or luminous, high-quality robes.

These last figures – numerous enough to notice – really caught my attention. Their uniform robes were ash-colored and inlaid with crimson designs like stone cracks filled with blood. When one them turned east, shading his eyes in a quick glance across the gorge, I saw that he wore a silken mask that covered everything below his eyes. Even at this distance, I couldn't mistake the design stitched across that mask – the broken red grin that adorned Hyrule's moon.

"Are those guys from the Moon Guild?" I asked, handing Kael the spyglass.

He apparently didn't need to sight them himself. "Aye," he acknowledged. "They ain't even tryin' to hide it, either."

I took back the glass and used it to scan north along the valley walls. Along one ridgeline, I saw a form like living smoke creep from a copse of trees. My heart lurched as I realized that it was a wolfos. Its exposed saw-blade teeth glinted fearfully in the sunset.

"God . . . _damnit_," I whispered.

"Aye. It doesn't look all that pretty, does it?" Kael sighed. "An' that's just the vanguard. A few big boys; a bunch o' engineers. Most likely settin' up trip-defenses should they have to make a retreat. Perhaps. You never know with this bunch."

I breathed, "So, they're just . . . _waiting_? They haven't attacked at all?"

Kael stretched and said, "There have been reports of clashes with enemy scouts. Fairies dueling in the sky above the valley. Some lads thought they saw some boks snoopin' around the cliffs north o' camp. Nothing we can really say with any certainty is enemy action. If it seems as if they wait, they probably are just waiting."

He shot me a knowing look. "That doesn't mean that the mages ain't workin' overtime to keep up the shielding hexes. Just because the enemy looks lazy doesn't mean we all want to die chokin' up our lungs from a gas attack."

I took one last pass of the busy Protectorate troops with the telescope and then handed it back to its owner. Without it, I thought I could just make out the blobby figures on the other ridgeline.

_If you return, I shall again be at your disposal. _If _you return._

A corpse-sour hand took hold of my stomach lining and _squeezed_. My insides squirmed and constricted at the thought of Zelda's words, the battle, the busy shapes on the far lip of the valley, the battle, the battle, the _battle_.

When I gazed down the ridgeline on which our horses stood, I finally saw small pickets of Hylian soldiers. They crouched in brush-covered pits and leaned over the walls of improvised timber stockades. These tiny forts spread on either side of us. There had to be several-dozen of them deployed along a mile of ridgeline. The defenders held spears and bows and stared west as if the Devil himself were about to come crashing over the hills.

And maybe he is, I thought miserably. Maybe he is.

"Come on, then," Sir Kael sighed. He turned his horse back toward the mesa and the waiting camp. "We'd best be gettin' ya' assigned to a tent. And you'd best get to preparin'."

It took nearly a full day for the rest of Hyrule's grand army to coalesce and organize itself. Stragglers from the Eighth Legion and the cavalry raiders borrowed from the Frontier Line arrived in an erratic stream. The base camp's borders expanded in uneven fits and starts. Everything buzzed with the steady bustle of an ant colony as the various legions liaised, blended, came under new command, and swapped out whole cohorts worth of soldiery. It was barely suppressed bedlam, given an undeniably manic edge by the knowledge that the enemy lay encamped and entrenched no more than a few miles away.

The Protectorate army continued its weirdly chivalric waiting game. However – though they refused to attack even at this most wonderful of opportunities – the followers of Ganon were far from idle. Strange wooden structures were erected atop distant rock outcroppings and huge, bristling shapes stalked the tree lines.

After nightfall, the Protectorate's side of the gorge ignited with dozens of tall, twisting bonfires. Hunched silhouettes threw God-knew-what into the pyres, spurring them into sparking whirlwinds of organ-meat red, festering green, and drowning-victim blue. A constant, resonating cacophony warbled from the west: There rose wretched howls, mocking laughter, mad gibbering, and furious speeches given in foreign tongues. The boom of mighty drums echoed across the valley.

The dreams I had on my stiff army cot were troubled ones.

Much of the intervening time was spent following Sir Kael close as a loyal puppy. What time I had to myself – mostly when he went to meetings of high officers in the central pavilions – I used trying to improve my horsemanship. Though Walther had promised no action coming my way, I wanted to be able to hold my own if things turned pear-shaped.

When Sir Kael invited me to dine with him at the central officers' mess, I balked at first. Before I could even grab for an excuse, Walther made it known how obvious I was being: "I assure ya' that General Baeleus doesn't take his meals there. He and the other Generals – an' some o' their favored staff – eat at smaller pavilion. I am told it it's somethin' to see."

So, he convinced me to eat with other commanding officers of the Third Legion. Their pavilion was one of the smaller of the central tents, but it still outstripped the size of every tent outside the central "command plaza." It was a hot, rowdy place where dust motes danced in profusion through the lamplight. Tables were set up end to end, with almost-looted-looking chairs scattered along their flanks. Stinging scents of tobacco and branna swam liberally with the welcome aroma of hot food.

Most of the men were seated about the tables – smoking, throwing back tin cups of wine, and digging into fresh biscuits and stew. Just beyond them, cooks with the air of rank-and-file legionaries worked a series of portable stoves and Dutch ovens. When Walther and I entered the vast tent, almost all eyes reflexively turned our way.

"Well, if it ain't the man himself!" crowed a pot-bellied, red-maned fellow.

"Wot, is it the Link?" a younger officer laughed. He tipped back in his chair to get a better look at the newcomers. When he caught sight of me – hatless and unable to hide the infamous hilt at my hip – he broke into a cackle. "Well, what a time! It _is _the man!"

There was a small clamor, but most of the officers seemed unaffected by our entrance. Kael shooed away tricky-looking on-comers and led me to a table to meet other men of the Third.

They proved a friendly and largely obsequious bunch. A few rougher-than-rough veterans eyed me with open suspicion, but kept their criticism to themselves. Other officers proved even younger than me – often with the stink of money about them. They all undeniably treated me with kid gloves. Even those gruff older types seemed to step aside for me.

In the officers' mess the conversation was jargon-heavy and full of keyed-up energy. I tried to stay below the radar and soak in what they thought about the coming battle. I couldn't decipher much of their talk of "goss" and "bomba," but snippets of straight talk revealed an obvious apprehension regarding the next few days. No one knew what to make of these headstrong invaders, and that made even the veterans nervous.

Between meals and Walther's tours about the camp, I kept trying to make better progress as a rider. Of course, it wasn't something that could be learned in a couple of days. Nor could it be forced. I can't say for certain whether those last lessons actually did any good come the time they were needed.

I discovered that, of the three men who had travelled with me, only Kyle Estan had been assigned to the 25th Cohort. This irked Walther Kael mightily, as he had intended to place all three of the Prime Legionaries in close proximity. Kyle gamely set up impromptu lessons for me, even though he now had active duties as a Prime Legionary to attend to. We rode all about the open areas of the encampment. Estan remained stone-faced even when Melark snorted and rejected my poorly timed cues.

I barely even had time to think during those blurring hours. When I did, it was usually to obsessively consider two things: Zelda and the Prophet. The two subjects stuck in my brain like popcorn shells impacted between molars.

Who (or _what_) had the cloaked figure really been? Who were the "higher powers" it claimed to work for? Why had it appeared to me now, on the eve of battle? Was I really just losing my mind? Was I, in fact, finally seeing the threadbare seams of the dreamworld into which I had placed myself?

For all that sturm und drang, thinking about Zelda felt even worse. The handmaiden appeared even more mysterious and frightening than the Prophet – who was a robed phantom who had stolen into and out of my life in the space of less than an hour. To mull Zelda al-Imzadi was to mull a looming shape in the corner of my eye, ever-present and never quite distinct. Fear and uncertainty made flesh. Thoughts of the Shiekah woman accompanied me into sleep that first night, serenaded by the distant boom and cry of the Protectorate front lines.

Those uncomfortable dreams I mentioned were full of violet eyes.

The next day dawned big and clear and nearly cloudless. It set to getting hot with a vengeance. A fuggy haze rolled off the contours of Stoneheart's landscape like something incanted into being.

On the morning of that second day in camp, I rode Melark into a gallop about the edge of the encampment, out into the meadows that stretched across the mesa-top. My heart pumped thunder as the horse hauled ass through the viridian fields. Kyle Estan followed behind at a determined trot, watching my horse and I with wry humor on his lips. As we scared ground-lying birds into flight and shook the nearby bushes, I finally felt as if I was getting the hang of this. For the first time in what felt like a long time, the glow of accomplishment ignited in my chest. It was short-lived, but desperately welcome.

Shortly after the noon meal, Walther appeared from between tents as if on springs. "Come with me, lad," he hissed. "General Tolskai's called a meetin' o' his officers. Word's out. Now that all o' us are here, the mobs are gettin' ready to march."

That definitely dumped some ice into my arteries. I numbly followed Kael through the camp and into one of the command pavilions. Though it was full daylight out, lanterns still hung from the pavilion's support beams. Chairs were set up before a kind of portable lectern. A servant rushed about, still fussing with the chairs. It was obvious that this had been set up more or less on the fly.

Banner-Commanders, Commanders, Sub-Commanders, and Captains were filing in to grab a seat. Kael tilted his head toward the front rows and I followed obediently. Once all of us had taken our places, General Tolskai himself swung behind the lectern and began speaking at once.

Alexander Tolskai was a grim, sinewy man whose slight lisp was overcome by the blunt, forward power of his speech. He spoke with quick, clipped tones that emphasized individual syllables almost dramatically. He also didn't fuck around – he got to the point right off the bat.

"The attack will come at dusk," he announced. "We have it on good authority that the Protectorate will try to cross the valley sometime during the evening. They may be counting on the sun dropping into our eyes. A fool's hope, I assure you. General Baeleus wants us ready to join the counter-assault within two hours. Review your orders and spread the word through the cohorts: Tonight, we join the battle."

It was an orderly sort of bomb that went off in the legionary encampment. Men walked and ran with deadly purpose in their gait. Smoke billowed out of the shacks of the field blacksmiths. The clangor of steel on steel rose to a pell-mell cacophony. Corral-masters reviewed horses. Men in grenadiers' purple unloaded crate after crate from the backs of supply wagons. They handled these as if they were offloading a cache of rabid wolverines.

Walther saw to it that I was prepared for battle. I was pressed into a series of stages set up through several tents. It felt as if I was working my way out to the show-stage of a beauty pageant.

They gave me a haircut. It was rather traumatic.

It had taken years to grow out my hair to my shoulders – I had never grown hair quickly or thickly. Sure, I had it clipped every few months so it wouldn't eventually end up falling to my ass. Nonetheless, I was kind of proud of this hair.

My protests went unheeded. "You ain't going to be able to wear a proper helm with your hair like a woman's, Olsen," Sir Kael admonished.

So I sat in a stiff chair and watched as an old man appeared through the flap of the tent with a pair of huge scissors and a straight razor. He didn't wear legionary colors. I guessed that he must be a servant or local guy pitching in for the war effort. The laconic little man draped a dirty sheet about my shoulders and set to his grim work.

I watched strands and small clouds of golden floss drift toward the trampled grass. I sighed heavily and listened to the _snip snip snip _of the old man's scissors with a sense of helpless loss.

At the end, I almost refused the hand mirror the barber offered me. I took it with obvious trepidation. When I looked into it, I saw a glimpse of an alternate universe where Linus Olsen had, at some point, joined the Marines. My hair had been sheared off down to an almost spiky crew cut. Hair far shorter than anything I had worn since I was nine years old. This strange, gaunt, military-minded Bizarro-Linus gaped back at me with astonishment and dismay.

Released from the dread hall of the barber, I entered a wash tent, where I took a dip in a basin of hot water. I scrubbed the loose hair from my skin and tried, tremblingly, to enjoy the bath. It was far too short – I was clapped out within minutes and handed a pair of legionary undergarments to struggle into. I didn't even have time to properly decide how terrified I was.

From there, I was given a slightly damp undershirt and then was sent to a legionary surgeon. He was a slow-eyed, irritable-looking man in his forties, round of face and dark of brow.

"I need to give you a brief examination, Mister Olsen. Please hold still and move only when I tell you to."

It was – thank God – not a thorough physical. The man seemed to be mostly making sure that I didn't have any bones sticking out. When he had tapped enough knees and done enough interested grunting, the surgeon declared, "Well, I wouldn't be putting you on the front line, myself. Not for anything that'll keep you out of the fight, mind you – you're fit as a fiddle. Nonetheless, you don't even look strong enough to swing around that, ah, _heroic _sword of yours."

"Yeah," I chuffed, "I'm a bit underweight."

"Unfortunately, it isn't my decision to make. Truthfully, I'm just here to make sure you're not a leper or something. Also, to give you _these_."

He leaned over a table and snatched a wide leather belt. Along it were sewn thick pouches secured with snaps. He pulled one of the leather pockets open. In it were four tightly packed glass vials. The liquid in each tube was a swimmy red.

The surgeon cocked an eyebrow and tapped the stopper on the nearest vial. "You know how to use these?" he asked gruffly.

"Yeah, yeah. Sure."

"Truly sure?" he said. "We don't need you vomiting up your intestines on the battlefield."

I nodded, though not without hesitation.

The surgeon showed off another pouch stocked with four tubes of the Red. There was one final, smaller pocket containing only a single vial. This last tube held a liquid that pulsed a burnished gold in the afternoon sun. When I looked close, I saw that the potion churned and bubbled in its glass confines.

"What's that?" I asked almost dreamily.

"It's for an emergency," the surgeon said. "I repeat: Drink this tonic only in the _direst_ emergency – the absolute, darkest threat to your life. Its side effects are, ah, _unpredictable_."

"Is it like the Red, then?"

"More or less," the surgeon said. "Though the Red can't grow limbs back. Nor will it cause your head to explode if taken improperly." He smiled as he saw me savor that.

After receiving my belt of potions, it was on to the main event: Suiting up. Sir Kael saw to this himself, clearly dressing me so that I stood out easily from the crowd.

"Now, as much as I'd like to put ya' behind two inches o' steel, you ain't strong enough to carry full plate," Walther said blithely. "So we're goin' to have to get a little creative in order to give ya' the most protection."

He ended up settling for a faux-gold vest of hardened steel ringmail, over which was placed a padded doublet. Kael deliberated for a moment before selecting a breastplate – and what a breastplate it was! Light, easy to snap on, and as ornately forged as anything I'd yet seen. Its surface was enameled a solid green and filigreed with branching designs of gold. In the center of the plate, the thunderbird of House Harkinian was emblazoned like an exploding star. A piece of genuine art.

I wondered who it actually belonged to. Surely they couldn't have had it made just for _me_. That was just silly.

Soon I gained padded trousers; a sturdy, hidden codpiece ("A good idea even if you don't plan on havin' children," Kael joked); steel bracers for my wrists and ankles; a small but heavy shield to fumble at with my left hand; and, a chainmail hood that felt cool against my shorn scalp. It slightly muffled the commotion that rang through the encampment.

For the coup de grace, Walther handed me a beautiful full helmet painted a glossy jade green. It was swept back and featured an elegantly curved, almost Greek facing. The oak-leaf designs that spread across its crown were surely wrought in gold and jet. A nose-guard came down quite neatly over my triangular schnoz.

A squire lashed the Master Sword to my hip and made certain that my potion-filled belt was secure. I assure you that few things feel stranger than letting another man put on your belt.

That was how I went out into the camp then, as the light began to fail in the west. Weighed down with padding and steel. Every sound ever-so-slightly buffeted by the layers of armor over my head. When I breathed heavily, it echoed in the helmet like a burst of wind.

All about us, men rushed to and fro. They hastily strapped on breastplates and secured the clasps on the sides of their greaves. Some threw on their visored helms even as they sprinted with pikes slung over their shoulders. There was laughter and shouting and curses of such vile creativity that I almost wanted to sit and write them down.

At my side, Walther stopped and said, "I need to suit up as well, Olsen. Wait for me near the command tent. When the time comes, we'll ride out together."

Before Walther could turn, there came a sound. Though it obviously originated from a great distance away, it still boomed like the boot-steps of a giant.

_THUM-THUM. THUM-THUM. THUM-THUM. THUM-THUM._

Something like the heart of the world, audible at last. An indescribably large sound of drums.

And then – oh, _then_ – we heard the following rise over the treetops:

_Haaaaaa. Haaaaa._

A wide, rumbling sigh that could only be the sound of tens of thousands of voices rising together in challenge. Thousands of howls and cheers . . . all echoing from the west.

"We're all fucked, aren't we?" I asked.

For this, Walther had no reply.


	38. 38

**38**

The sound that heralded the Battle of Kerneghi Gorge – that night that brought war so fully into my life – was almost disappointingly ordinary:

Bells.

The first was a simple hand-bell, wielded by one of Walther Kael's Banner-Sergeants. An ugly, imposing man with a bow-legged strut and a mass of gnarled gray cartilage where one of his ears had once perched.

"Form _up_, lads!" he boomed, ringing and ringing his instrument through the center of the Third's cavalry tents. Other bells and other Sergeants' voices echoed through the encampment. Everywhere there was a convulsive stirring as thousands of bodies tensed and leapt to action.

The sun was starting its descent toward night. Insects trilled ceaselessly in the fragrant scrub bushes. A breeze stirred about smells of campfires and ripe vegetation.

Sir Walther himself arrived back on the scene decked out in a full suit of finely made armor. I saw that it was the same armor he had worn when he escorted the Lons and I into Hylium. Enameled white designs curled inward toward his own version of the Harkinian thunderbird. That enormous bastard sword sat strapped to his back. In the crook of one arm he held a strange-looking helmet.

"C'mon, old son. That's the call. Time to ride out to the edge o' the valley." Kael motioned with a heavy gauntlet toward a milling corral. "Time to saddle up!"

We strutted forth, zeroing in on the snorting, sneezing, and anxious whinnying of the legionary horses. All about us, Sergeants of all stripes were hollering out the numbers of their squads and cohorts. Men in the thick steel greaves and kneepads of pikemen clattered into formations all through the outskirts of the encampment. Skirmishers sporting breastplates and shields obsessively checked over their swords.

I certainly caught eyes as I made my way through the chaotic encampment. My green armor and golden ringmail were definitely doing their jobs, drawing the gaze of every man who glanced my way. It finally occurred to me that this would almost certainly prove true in battle. Me: "The Inspiration."

I had to wonder: Was I the sacrificial lamb or the Judas goat? How many men would follow my lead to their deaths that evening?

Not that it mattered, though. I was a little too distracted to really agonize about it. I was being rather more selfish in the majority of my thoughts.

I found that my fear was a now physical thing. It clenched along the lines of my abdominal muscles and made each breath feel cold, raspy, and incomplete. My heart stuttered and I could feel my hands shaking ever so slightly.

The 25th Cohort's corral approached on my left. Quartermasters doled out horses while hurriedly scratching in loosely bound notebooks. In their eyes was the icy promise of destiny fulfilled.

At last, I realized I couldn't take it anymore. I stopped in my tracks and pawed at Walther Kael's shoulder plate. He glanced back half-concerned, half-irritated. I didn't even wait for him to ask what was wrong.

"I d-don't know if I can do this, man," I stuttered. "P-p-please. I can't do this. I'm scared shitless and I really, _really _can't do this."

"Bollocks," Kael said flatly.

"I'm not a soldier," I whispered. "I can't fuckin' use this sword! I can only barely ride a horse!"

"You have improved considerably in past days, Olsen. You will do fine."

I whined, "Please! I cannot fucking do this. I just can't. I'm going to die. Oh, _shit. _I am going to fucking die and it'll be a thousand miles from anywhere I fucking _know –"_

"Linus."

God, was I really shaking this badly? I hoped it didn't look as bad as it felt.

"Linus, look at me. Listen."

I tried.

The tall knight's voice had become astonishingly gentle. "I was thirteen years old when I fought in my first battle," Walther Kael said. "During the last rebellion. It was one of the final engagements – moppin' up raider bands disobeyin' the treaty. I was squiring for Sir Raymond Exeter and had to keep to his side when we rode up to their camp. They knew we were comin'; we knew that they knew we were comin'. I was so scared I went out behind some bushes and puked up everything in my guts. Then I thought about runnin'. Thought up a thousand excuses and places to hide. I almost – _almost_ – crawled under an old stump to wait the fight out. But you know what I did?"

I shook my head.

"I breathed deep and I steadied my hands and I took the thought that I might die – the thought that had driven all that terror – and I _forgot_ it. I forgot how to recall it. I forgot how to even have the idea to have it. I stopped thinkin' about anything but the battle and how I was goin' to help Sir Exeter win the day."

He drilled me with his stone-colored eyes. "I _stopped thinkin'_. Not active-like. Not anything deep or complex or worrisome. I allowed myself just enough to stay on my horse an' do my job. 'Cuz the first battle is the worst one. It gets much easier after that."

I nodded dumbly.

A shofar-like horn blew a warbling note somewhere to our left. Among the marchers, a Sergeant-at-Arms barked the numbers of his squad or cohort. _Thir-teen_!_ Thir-teen_!

Just as Sir Kael looked as if he wanted to turn and continue on to the corral, I asked, "What happened?"

"Eh?"

"In the battle. Your first one."

The big man nodded stiffly. "It was fine. Got a cut on the shoulder that I whined about a bit, but we lost only a handful of men." He motioned me forth with a plastered-on grin. "See? It'll turn out just as well today. You'll not see a scratch on ya', Mister Olsen. Of this you have my pledge."

I followed him sourly, as the fear had yet to work itself out of my knotted muscles. "How many people were in that one, Walther?" I asked.

"That first raid? Ah – maybe a hundred between both sides. We caught them from a ravine they thought impassable and slaughtered half of 'em before they even knew we were there."

"Huh," I said. So, it had been a little less than a thousand times smaller than the incoming battle. I wandered to the rough corral gates feeling as if I had been punched in the side of the head.

Slipping onto a saddle atop good, familiar Melark eased my mind for all of four seconds. Then I was twisting the reins between my fingers like they were a lifeline.

Walther appeared beside me soon after, sitting astride a huge black charger. The mare eyed Melark askance, as if in mild disapproval. We began to ride out to 25th Cohort's rendezvous point. The knight rode close – close enough that he only had to lean slightly from his saddle to speak furtively.

"Remember:" he said. "All you have to do tonight is keep control o' your mount. We're placed far back and at a point that probably won't see any direct action. Do not leave my side under any circumstances. Is that clear?"

I nodded gravely.

"If we do get into a scrap, keep doin' the same. Stick to me and don't try any o' that hero business. If you take any risks, you're liable to die."

Oh, that was reassuring. The ice-water fear that inundated me up to my armpits rose to my chin. After all, it was such a short ride to the ridgeline. The ridgeline, which was now bathed in the rich red and amber hues of sunset.

I followed close behind Kael as we proceeded to the 25th's meeting ground: a patch of green meadow some hundred yards out of the northern edge of the camp. There we found gathered almost two-hundred horsemen – elite cavalry riders assigned to Kael's command. The cream of several legions' crops . . . all to protect me. They eyed me from within their visored helms and managed their mounts as troops of soldiers streamed westward about us. When all riders of the 25th were accounted for, we set off for the battle lines.

We headed northward – farther afield than my previous ride up to the ridge had taken me. This route took us to a lower hummock of land that served as a bulging lip into the river valley. To our left, Hyrule's legions were taking the field – climbing the ridgeline and then dropping onto the rolling slope of the gorge. Row upon row of pikemen, scurrying skirmishers, and rushing bands of archers.

To our right, mixed cohorts of cavalry, infantry, and grenadiers formed up. Further right: Nothing. So, we were near the right flank of the entire Hylian army. Out past that were the thick, tree-choked marshes of the northern Kerneghi River Valley. On the valley floor, water was turning to obsidian in the swiftly waning light.

"This is where we shall await them!" Sir Kael shouted to the cohort. "This is where we stand!"

He slipped on his helmet. I saw now why it had looked so odd before: Instead of an actual visor flipped up over the helm's crown, it sported a kind of full-face war mask. The mask itself was an intricate, alabaster portrait of an almost angelic face – which was contorted with rage. Was this, then, Sir Kael's totem? His fighting emblem? That gave me a shiver.

Nearly an hour passed as the proud legions of Hyrule marched into formation on the uneven slopes of the Kerneghi River Valley. Tens of thousands of men thus arrayed, armor bright and pikes shining like beacons.

Among them billowed vertical banners on gilded poles. Cohorts' designs; the huge and almost abstract symbols of each legion; the streaming purple and gold sigil of House Harkinian. A sea of flags bobbing in an ocean of soldiery.

We were positioned quite far behind the front lines of troops, even considering that we were near the northern flank of the entire army. It afforded a fine view of almost the entirety of the gathering forces, but also looked like it would be a backwater of the actual battle. Just as Walther Kael had said, they were going to try to keep me out of any actual fighting.

I grew impatient. I kept trying to scratch at my newly shorn hair, only for my fingers to meet the smooth metal of my helmet. Itches that developed in my groin and armpit were similarly off-limits.

I kept trying to ask Walther questions, only to be rebuffed by the arrival of some new messenger or Banner-Sergeant clarifying orders. When Kael did get in a word edgewise, it was to remind me to stay calm, stay close, and stay alive.

My efforts to suss out the condition of the enemy were stymied by the sun and my own mute terror over what I might find. In a frustrated attempt to assuage me, Walther handed me his spyglass and told me to keep a lookout on the western ridgeline. He of course had no need of whatever intelligence I gathered – he had scouts of both the flying and riding variety reporting to him in rushed whispers every few minutes.

I scanned the western horizon with the telescope and discovered two fascinating facts: First of all, the hillock the 25th Cohort now occupied was rather lower than any of the previous spots I had observed the valley from. Second – if the Protectorate was really getting ready to pour into Kerneghi Gorge, they weren't being particularly obvious about it. Though I could easily see the odd structures erected by Ganon's sappers and engineers, no living forms trotted across the opposite slope. Admittedly, this was a terrible angle to look at – too low to see into the trees and too far north to see past the biggest rock outcroppings.

A rattling sigh worked its way out of my throat. It looked like I was going to have to content myself to chill a bit. "Content" was not the right word for it – I shuffled and fidgeted in my saddle like a five-year-old at a ballet recital. The warm breath of the valley rose up about us and the amber light of dusk washed down. I sat and waited fearfully and wondered whether my single stop at the jakes before my haircut would be adequate.

Some thirty or forty minutes after we had arrived at our designated position, a new group of riders crested the hillside rolling up to the south. They came down the ridgeline at a measured trot, heading straight for our cohort and the rest of the army's right flank. They were about ten in number, carrying heavy, elaborate armor and an air of intense gravity. Two were banner-carriers: the vertical flags of both House Harkinian and the Royal Legions were bolted directly into the backs of their armor. The horsemen were accompanied by a loping pack of dogs – shaggy, dark-coated war hounds with the upright, muscular carriage of mastiffs and the almost lazy, bob-tailed demeanor of black bears.

At their forefront rode General Renaldo Baeleus. His hair and beard had seen a recent trim, and every aspect of his appearance shone clean and impeccable. Those fire-blue eyes of his shone with both open excitement and radiant malevolence.

The General was arrayed in a suit of armor very similar to the one he had been wearing the first time I had seen him. Its plates were well-forged, pleasingly curved, and enameled a deep crimson. Silver vines wound their way over his wide shoulder-plates. Along the gorget were carved Hylian words, interwoven with shining ivy. A stunning piece of work, made much poorer in my eyes by the man wearing it.

As Sir Kael and his riders saw the incoming Commander-in-Chief, they lowered their eyes and pressed their fists into the sky in salute.

"An honor, General Baeleus!" Walther barked. "Do you inspect the lines?"

Renaldo Baeleus pulled up his horse a dozen yards from the 25th's command squad. We were all gathered about Walther like a loose solar system about a silvery star. Kyle Estan – almost unrecognizable beneath the armor and halberd of his vocation – lingered to Walther's right. I sat in the saddle to the knight's left. That made me the closest of the riders to the General – and it made me feel vulnerable.

"I do, Banner-Commander," Baeleus said. His gaze skipped over me as if I were a bit of rubbish on the side of a busy boulevard. "Have your orders been distributed? Are any there any problems with your organization and deployment?"

"None, General," Kael replied. "The cavalry of the Third Legion stands ready. They need only your word to ride for the enemy."

"Excellent!" Baeleus smiled. He spurred his mount away from the other members of his retinue, riding closer to Sir Kael. The General dropped his voice and decisively said, "You are the pinion that holds our right flank together, Banner-Commander. Your fearless command will decide victory or defeat in this conflict. Do you understand?"

"I will not fail you, General."

"If you must ride out yourself, do so. However, it is of the utmost importance that you maintain your chain of command. You have your assigned gossip stones?"

"Aye, General."

"Very good," Baeleus nodded. "They are worth a hundred times their weight in Rupees, I assure you. Remember that you are an officer now, Sir Kael. Do not take any risks for the sake of honor – or any past glories. You are of best use to me as a commander. Understood?"

Though he looked like he had a kidney stone, Walther said, "Very much so, Sir Baeleus."

At last, the General acknowledged my presence. As he turned his horse back toward the men he had rode in with, Baeleus glanced my way. His lip curled and he produced a yipping noise that might have been a clipped laugh.

"Please make sure this one comes out unharmed," General Baeleus sneered. "I shan't have a pointless death on my conscience."

Before I could fire off any snide remarks of my own – perhaps at the risk of my own life – General Baeleus motioned for the rest of his retainers to follow him. He shouted, "Good hunting, Banner-Commander! Kill them all!"

Then he, the hounds at his heels, and his retinue continued riding south – presumably to inspect the rest of the army's flank. The sun shone like blood on blood across the General's crimson armor. His banners grew black as they pulled farther away from us, their color choked by the failing light.

"What a fucking asshole," I muttered.

"Come now, lad," Sir Kael murmured. "He may be a right high-born bastard, but General Baeleus ain't a man ya' can just dismiss like that. You know he's younger than me, right? Hell, I don't think he's much older than _you_, now that I think of it. I heard that he's the youngest general in the known history o' the Legions."

I chuffed, "So? He's a lord. The King even mentioned his _dad_ during the War Council meeting. He got the post 'cause daddy was a big man at court."

"Don't let his treatment of ya' to blind ya' to the obvious, Linus," Kael admonished. "The General is a tried-an'-true Knight of Hyrule. He came by that title honest, surprisin' as that may sound. I'm sure that his family's wealth an' power helped him on the way, but he's fought in this war from the beginnin'. An' the rumors say that Renaldo Baeleus could be the best swordsman in all o' Hyrule."

This gave me pause, though it was a peevish one.

The attack came less than ten minutes later.

I will give the Protectorate this much: They gave us plenty of warning. So far as I could tell, they signaled their intent to attack within minutes of the last of Hyrule's men taking the field. From beyond the western tree line there echoed a throaty, massed cry. A fell, answering roar ululated over the spines of rock and echoed down the length of the valley. A family of herons took to panicked flight from the willow groves.

Moments later, we heard the explosive return of Ganon's mighty drums. I have no idea of what wretched alchemy Ganon's sorcerers used to make those drums sound so loud – so deep – so terrible. All I know is that the instruments had to be a mile or more away – and yet they sounded as if they boomed only yards distant. Their relentless percussion sounded and pounded in every corner of the gorge. Their bass beats felt as if they rattled the bones of my inner ear. To listen to them was to know a dread as primordial as men listening to thunder as they huddled in charcoal-streaked caves.

_THUM-THUM thum-thum THUM-THUM thum-thum._

"Prepare yourself!" Sir Walther Kael breathed to me. He instantly wheeled about and called, "Steady on! Captains, sound!"

Amid the riders of the 25th Cohort, a half-dozen men shouted out their names and pledged their readiness. Kael repeated the command for his Banner-Sergeants, Sergeants-at-Arms, and the ever-ready Prime Legionaries. Kyle Estan bellowed his name with a force that I hadn't thought the man had in him.

I mused, somewhat helplessly: Red Leader, standing by.

_THUM-THUM THUM-thum THUM-THUM-THUM-thum._

Elsewhere on the line, other Commanders and Sub-Commanders yelled names and orders. Across the gorge: War-cries. The bone-shuddering howls of wolfos. The gargling roars of things for which I had no name.

_Ka-RUM-pum-PUM-pum. RUM-pum-PUM-pum._

It took me a moment to realize that these last drums belonged to Hyrule. Somewhere out in the teeming middle of the Hylian ranks, drummers loyal to King Daphnes were answering those that beat to the tune of Ganon.

_THUM-THUM-THUM-THUM_!

Their combined percussion became an argument . . .

_RUM-PUM-PUM-RUM-PUM-PUM_!

. . . and rose into shuddering debate, carried on the clash of bass and treble.

Banner-Commander Kael shouted, "All that carry gossip stones: Final tests! Adjutants, confirm the readiness of your riders' stones!"

The overwhelming thunder of amplified drums was joined by a smaller, tinnier, much stranger sound: _Ping-ping! Ping-ping! Ping-ping!_

Despite its comparatively quiet cry, this oddball noise was quite audible over the calls of officers and the damnable contest carrying on between each side's drums. The sound was part bell, part cricket, and part something that felt like it should be emitting from an early-model cell phone. Each lively _Ping! _vibrated in my ears in a way that even the Protectorate's demonic drumming could not match.

Before I could ask what caused this uncanny chirruping, Kael cast a glance over his shoulder. His eyes were ablaze with the colors of sunset. His determined expression faltered. The long fissure of his facial scar suddenly blanched the color of bad cement. He breathed:

"Ah, Din's arse. Here they come."

On the other side of the lush, sun-gilded expanse of the Kerneghi River Valley, the moblins arrived.

A massive line of Protectorate troops rose up over the ridgeline of the western slope. A whole section of hillside suddenly bristled with a tide of marching bodies.

I realized that I had begun to shake. I looked down at my hands. I blinked and counted inwardly. I desperately tried to secure my shit. It was then that I noticed that I was still gripping Walther's spyglass.

"Dude," I muttered. "Do you mind if I keep this? I think I need to see this thing."

Kael eyed me suspiciously. His face was as much a mask as the one flipped onto the crown of his helm. "If you must," he finally said.

A cheer rose up then from Hyrule's lines – not as fearful as the Protectorate's, but surely just as thunderous. A conjoined, rolling ur-voice made up of nearly forty-thousand tongues. Between each word, the butts of pikes struck stone and drummers crashed upon their instruments.

"LONG!"

Twenty-thousand boots stomped.

"LIVE!"

Five-thousand skirmishers' swords struck their shields.

"THE KING!"

Then there were no words – just the combined Royal Legions roaring in defiance of the marching hordes of Ganon. The stalwart sound resonated in my ribs and thrummed against the heavily pumping walls of my heart.

But: for all the courage and stoic valor the legions showed, the Protectorate army did not falter.

They advanced in a somewhat hesitant, lockstep wave only two ranks deep. An army of shadows, set like paper cut-outs against the red dome of the sun. Spears, pikes, and axes extended from their silhouettes as if the weapons were ugly outgrowths springing directly from the moblins' shoulders.

When they crossed the ridgeline and began their ever-so-careful descent down the stony incline, the attackers' forms grew simultaneously grayer and more distinct. Now I could just see the white of their tusks jutting from beneath thick helms. Heavy armor plates shifted over their hunched backs. We heard – as if in another land – their grunts and shouts and the clanking of their greaves echoing through the belly of the gorge.

"Merely a test," Walther narrated. "They will stagger deployment until they are certain of our strategy. They know that we hold them at a disadvantage until all our gambits are revealed. Then they will answer in kind, and this battle will truly begin."

Of course he was right. Hyrule's legions moved not an inch from their grounded columns. When the advancing Protectorate line was roughly a third of its way down the western incline, another rank began its advance over the lip of the gorge behind them. Just as Walther had predicted, their infantry was sallying forth in randomly spaced waves.

Melark tossed his dark mane and whinnied. You're an impatient bastard for a eunuch, I mused.

I muttered, "Aren't we going to do something?"

The first ranks of Ganon's infantry were stomping through rock falls and around stands of hardy trees. Was it just me, or were they coming faster now? Was their drop toward the river more precipitous?

"No," Sir Kael said. "_We_ will wait." Unconcealed frustration ran roughly through his voice.

For the first time, I considered what it meant that Walther had been relegated to the position of overblown babysitter for the duration of this battle. He had wanted to join the fight directly, but had to stick to me like flypaper – and that meant keeping me as far away from the actual brawl as possible.

Before I could voice this concern, the knight growled, "Just watch, Olsen. The snouts ain't incorrect in bein' cautious."

The walls of the gorge – gentle as they were here – must have played strange tricks with acoustics. The front ranks of the Protectorate army must have been damned near a mile away, but I could still hear the roaring shouts of its taskmasters. Shouted commands in both the moblin language and garbled, accented Hylian. The tromp of their boots on the rock-strewn earth was a centipede thunder.

Then came the _buzzing_.

A blue star brighter than any other swooped from behind the Hylian lines and streaked out over the gorge. Another followed it close behind, blazing red as a super-giant. And another – _green_ – and another – _pumpkin orange_ – and another – _golden as the sun_. More thrummed overhead – then more and more and yet _more_, until the steel-blue sky was encrusted with flying jewels. Hundreds of fairies shot forth in an arc over the gorge.

A triumphant roar rose from the Royal Legions. Men lifted their weapons and called out to the fairies as they soared overhead.

Walther Kael laughed, "Ah, 'ere we go. Sight for sore eyes. Watch this, lad. I always love when they open the battle with this."

I focused every ounce of my attention on the swarm of freewheeling legionary fairies. Attached to each spark of a body was a swaying, silvery globe. Hundreds of the spheres – each about the size of a grapefruit – now careened upward, towed through the air by the fairies of the Hylian grenadiers.

I saw an unmistakable ripple of hesitation run through the front ranks of the enemy lines. A few of the advancing moblins slung bows from their shoulders and began to twang useless arrows toward the corps of fairies. Somewhere far over the western ridgeline, an honest-to-God flare ignited. Sharp white light began to strobe through the intervening trees.

The fairies formed into squadrons – diamonds and triangles and spheres of coruscating light – and tore ass up over Kerneghi Gorge. Their globular payloads shone like peals as they caught the gaze of the dying sun.

All of Hyrule's soldiers quieted. I swore that I felt a collective intake of breath.

The fairies reached the apex of their ascent. The spheres in their tiny hands swung up noticeably – and, suddenly, they sailed free, unaccompanied by their deliverymen, and careened upward like a field of synthetic meteors. The great swarm of fairies banked and pulled up, borne forth by momentum, the sound of their turning like a ramshackle prop engine. A wave of rainbow lights rushed back toward the Hylian lines as if in hot pursuit.

They _were _pursued, I now realized. Other, darker sparks flew like bullets from the western ridgeline. Fairies in the service of Ganon, playing interceptor to Hyrule's bombers.

And now their cargo began to plummet out of the sky – a rain of solid quicksilver. Below this metal storm marched the first ranks of the Protectorate troops, seemingly oblivious to the oncoming shower of plummeting globes.

I heard Walther cackle, "Nothing like a bit o' napalm to make 'em question their priorities."

"NAPALM?" I squawked – but no one heard it. Everything was drowned out as those fairy-borne spheres struck earth. The explosions began in earnest.

The river and much of the opposing slope _bloomed_. With a hot, rank roar the center of the gorge became a tongue of fire. Dozens of bright blossoms of flame rose from the river banks. Their concussions rattled against me like the blasting of some hideous timpani. Trees caught fire and were blasted to splinters. Smoke like the breath of Hell rolled up out of the gorge and rushed over our shoulders.

I coughed and gagged and attempted to shield my watering eyes. The helm only seemed to make it worse – as if the smoke lingered in the peak of the helmet.

Through the smoke flowed the screams of the damned. Moblin voices mewling their last breaths. When the breeze shifted and the vapor thinned, I could just see the remains of the "test ranks" fleeing back up the western incline. Bodies lay everywhere, bloodied and aflame. I watched as one poor bastard in heavy armor attempted to run toward the river, his entire body a winding sheet of fire. I was grateful that I could not hear him as he collapsed into a barbecuing heap only feet from the water's edge.

The river itself was on fire. Oily flames licked up off the dark, placid waters.

Sir Walther Kael yelled, "By Din, I love the modern age!"

My eyes danced with the flames. "Do you also love the smell of napalm in the morning?" I asked weakly.

Kael laughed. "What? Don't you?"

It's hard to describe how I felt at that moment. Disgusted? Yes, maybe a little. Fearful? Undeniably, but now it was a different sort of fear.

Impressed? Absolutely.

Streams of fairies still shot over the legions' heads. A few still tangled with enemy airmen out over the valley. I watched as a yellow fairy and a violet one lunged back and forth, over and around, across the sky. Within seconds, the yellow fairy's luminescence convulsed, flickered, and began to fade as it fell from the air. I wasn't even sure which side had won until the violet fairy rushed back toward the Protectorate lines.

Out in the gorge, the Protectorate ground troops poured westward in full retreat. Surely that couldn't be the end of it, right?

Of course not: Rank upon rank of soldiers still waited atop the stony ridgeline. Some of these parted to let their fleeing comrades back into the relative safety of the main host. Above all of them, hundreds of Protectorate-loyal fairies had taken flight. A swirling, dread-laden storm of glowing points.

"Why don't they just do the same to _us_?" I asked weakly. I kept trying to breathe through my nostrils and kept getting big huffs of napalm stink. The not-quite-gasoline stench of it was enough to curdle whatever occupied my stomach. Whatever alchemic mixture the Hylians had used to create the stuff must have been vile indeed.

"Just watch," Kael said patiently. It was difficult to hear him through the astonishing cacophony of screams, secondary explosions, dive-bombing fairy wings, and the unruly, vengeful shouts of both armies. "It ain't but early. I expect that – ah. Here we go. Looks like it's the Moonies' turn to show off."

Once more, I traced Sir Kael's line of sight westward. I squinted and then pulled the telescope to one eye.

As I watched through the round port of its lens, the rows of moblin infantry crowding the opposite bluffs suddenly pulled back. They tromped through the tree line so quickly that I almost thought they were executing a full retreat – but then I saw that most of them had simply regrouped within the screen of thick greenery. Among them, Hylians in pale robes sprinted forth to the edge of the gorge. Men of the Moon Guild. The masked alchemists unpacked boxes and packs with trained, rapid, almost arthropod movements.

Something wrenched itself up over the western horizon. For a moment, a single bony limb was extended against the failing sun, like the finger of a rotting giant. Then came another. And another.

I felt like my throat might close up on itself as the infernal body attached to those great talons made itself visible. It appeared through the pine trees like something birthed from the blood-seeping gash of Hell. When a second creature – almost completely identical to the first – crashed onto the slope farther south, it took considerable effort not to lose consciousness and drop out of the saddle.

They were huge, lumbering, quintessentially grotesque things. Each was easily the size of an elephant and moved with mechanical, methodical slowness over the western ridgeline. When they crawled onto the slopes of the gorge, each of their eight limbs chose its point of purchase precisely. Three-pronged claws dug into soil and took hold of rock outcroppings. Even at this distance, I could tell the plates of pitted, grayish chitin covering their enormous bodies were as thick as tank armor. Beneath heavy folds of the stuff was situated a single, distorted, hate-filled eye.

In the immense din of the unfolding battle, the descent of these terrifying newcomers was uncannily silent.

"What the fuck is _that_?" I breathed. "What the fuck _is _it?"

I received no answer; or, if I did, it was drowned out by the world-tearing concussion that poured into my ears and annihilated all higher thought.

It was as if a dozen bolts of lightning had struck the same spot at the exact same moment. Anything that still held shape and definition was washed with a swimming corona of bluish-white. An acrid ozone stench rose and itched through my sinuses. The hairs inside my nostrils stood on end, tingling.

For a time (probably no more than ten or twenty seconds, truth be told), my entire world became a series of flickering after-images. I blinked and swayed and tried to orient myself. I felt lightheaded – as if I had just held my breath a few seconds too long.

Below me, I felt Melark's flanks twitch and his breath blow out his nostrils in a contemptuous snort. He tossed his head as if to indicate, _Bring it on, motherfuckers_.

When my vision cleared, I spent some moments wondering if I was actually seeing correctly at all. Surely I must still be suffering the effects of . . . well, whatever the fuck had just happened. After all, I was now confronted with a world-spanning vision: About fifty yards west of the 25th Cohort hung an immense, ghostly spider web. For a few moments, I wondered if the arachnid monstrosities on the ridge were responsible. However, it quickly became clear that the apparition was the product of something else entirely.

Sizzling through the air were glowing lines, growing fainter with each second – like the filaments of a light bulb quickly shut off. It was as if a fence of concertina wire had been set up invisibly just beyond our lines, going unnoticed until it had suddenly heated to molten levels. This barrier spread in a web of jagged, byzantine, interlocking designs. Between these arcane traceries, the air shimmered in a haze of bulbous heat mirage.

There was a crackling sigh as the wheeling triangles, sawteeth, ziggurats, and starry mandalas flared, pulsed, and ebbed into nothingness.

I felt something like the numb aftermath of a static shock roll down my spine. A moment later, it was as if the whole conflagration – which could not have lasted more than thirty seconds – hadn't even occurred. I might as well have hallucinated it all.

Nonetheless, I could see through billows of napalm smoke that those arachnoid dreadnaughts still advanced down the western slope of the gorge. The closest to our wing of the army balanced its foremost claws on a granite outcropping. Its single central eyeball blazed in a whirlpool of rising heat. Tiny flickers – like runnels of far-off lightning – ran along its forward shell. That red-hot eye gazed out with unblinking, fathomless loathing.

"Holy shit!" I coughed.

"Aye," Sir Kael acknowledged. "It ain't an easy thing to sit through – especially the first time ya' see it. If it weren't for the mages' shield hexes, those armogohma would wipe us out to a man."

He smiled unconcernedly and ran a gauntlet over his horse's mane. "Steady now, girl," Walther crooned. The mare whickered nervously, but showed no signs of bolting. Despite the catastrophe that still cast bruised ghosts in the corners of my eyes, no mount in the cohort had so much as bucked. They were well-trained war horses indeed.

"Armogohma," I said flatly.

"Aye," Kael acknowledged. How the fuck could the man still sound so calm? It was all I could do not to turn Melark and haul ass as far east as the gelding would carry me.

"They're created in Ganon's alchemy pits. Livin' siege engines. A wretched mockery o' a majestic animal. Fortunately," he grinned, "we've had a few years to create countermeasures for 'em."

I nodded bleakly. Every time I moved my head, camera-flash-blue shadows blurred along the edges of solid objects. A hollow, insensate, almost apathetic sensation poured down my spine. So this was modern warfare in Hyrule.

It wasn't over yet, either. To the south, the second armogohma's eyeball suddenly flared the luminescent color of a propane gas jet. Moments later, there was a wild thunderclap and a beam of blinding blue-white fire streamed from the monster's ocular cavity. It was a titanic blast that shook the ground for a square mile – a living laser that struck the center of the Hylian lines like an exploding freight train.

My ears popped and a reek I associated with poor industrial districts came wafting up the lines. I coughed and squinted, vision afflicted with image-ghosts from the moment the armogohma had attacked.

The aftermath of the strike was the same as the last – not one defender of Hyrule fell to the horror's magical assault. I watched as identical sorcerous designs appeared like a phantom wall of engraved glass. The armogohma's beam and its attendant explosion ripped, roared, raged, and eventually dissipated against the shimmering shield hex. Behind it, the ranks of legionaries stood with stony patience, completely unharmed.

Once more the armogohma nearest us propped itself against the earth, let its murderous eye shine hot as a blast furnace, and unleashed sorcerous fire against the Hylian lines. Shortly after, the southerly creature followed suit. The assaults battered our senses and caused our mounts no small amount of irritation. Nonetheless, the streams of spectral energy crushed against the war hexes and then dissolved into nothing more than scorching air and echoes.

From there on out, the two vat beasts ceased trying to literally stare us to death. "Tapped out!" Walther declared with a kind of happy morbidity.

Despite running out of magical juice, the massive creatures continued their descent into the valley. Behind them, the western ridgeline once again boiled with the front-line troopers of the Protectorate.

Just as Sir Walther Kael had predicted, the true battle now began in earnest. Hylian fairies, loaded down with yet more bombs, curled suddenly from the southeast and unleashed their cargo on the armogohma there. A cannonade of explosions blistered the vat beast until it was invisible behind a cloak of smoke and fire. Protectorate fairies wheeled out to dance and duel. Though it was now coated in a relentless blanket of flames, the armogohma continued to crawl eastward.

And all of a sudden, it was completely fucking impossible to keep track of every single movement that occurred. I tried and immediately failed.

Columns of moblins rushed down the western slopes in loping zigzags. Curtains of green, phantasmagoric flame trailed their flanks.

Previously hidden long-bowmen unleashed hails of arrows that looked, at this distance, like expanding clouds of needles.

Explosions shook the hillsides and the resultant clouds of debris simply hung in air, spinning and roiling like ethereal, half-solid storm clouds.

Far to the south, a stream of Protectorate mounted cavalry abruptly burst over a sheer cliff side and rode _down _it. They clung to the wall in a full-on vertical charge, hooves kicking up blue sparks, until the column struck the edge of the river in a cloud of spray. From there, they tore toward Hyrule's southern flank with demonic abandon.

Gnarled figures were born aloft by wings like those of bats or keese. They snapped and snarled with saurian jaws.

I let the spyglass slide from my eye and simply stared, agog and speechless, at the unfolding madness. The entire region was smothered beneath a shroud of concussions, war chants, unnatural howling, pounding drumbeats, screeching arrows, and thousand-fold boot-falls. Through it all was threaded the incessant _Ping-ping-ping!_ that had accompanied the opening movements of the battle_._

Barely a drop of blood had yet been shed, and it was still the most indefinably insane thing I'd yet seen in my life. A battle beyond my previous powers of reckoning. Dämmerung on the Kerneghi River.

Only now did Hyrule's front ranks begin their grim march into the gorge. With rows of pikemen at their fore, the Hylians stepped with unshakeable precision down the eastern slope. I could only imagine what the men in the front line now saw barreling toward them, painted by the crimson halo of dusk: Ten-thousand grotesque shapes at a full run, hellfire and horror at their heels. At least two – no, three now, _holy fuck_ – cyclopean, spider-like abominations rearing up among them. Ever-stranger shapes rose from the west – twisted shadows birthed by alchemy, magic, and the gray, amoral void between.

This can be nothing but a dream, I thought. Nothing can be this mad. Nothing can be this nonsensical.

I was so enraptured by the pandemonium of battle that I only caught the barest flicker of the rider as he approached from the northwest. He came on a small, swift gray pony and wore almost no armor. Though I didn't know it at the time, the crossed arrow-and-hawk emblem sewn on his padded doublet identified him as a member of the Legionary Scout Corps. When I did finally pivot my skull to glance at him, the first thing I noticed was the desperate terror etched over his features. He led his mount at a gallop so reckless I thought the poor, foaming animal might collapse.

"BANNER-COMMANDER!" he shouted. "BANNER-COMMANDER KAEL!"

Walther turned about in his saddle with genuine surprise souring his features. He gestured to the riders about him to give the incoming scout room to pull up. At the same time, Kael urged his charger forward to meet the newcomer.

When the panting rider finally pulled to a scrambling stop before Sir Kael, it actually did look like his pony was about to drop dead of exhaustion. The scout swept long black hair from his eyes and, without any preamble or salute, cried, "Banner-Commander, sir! Enemy cavalry approach from the north! They will arrive at our flank in minutes!"


	39. 39

**39**

For agonizing seconds, there were no words.

Walther stared at the young man coolly. "Calm down, son," he said. "Calm down an' give me the whole of it."

The scout gasped, "There're boar riders out there, sir! They're movin' fast through the northern reach o' the gorge. Straight through the river an' the swamps!"

"Are you certain it was the mobs you saw? An' cavalry at that? I'm told there're dozens o' scouts from both sides out in that valley right now. You could have –"

"Nay, sir!" the scout all but wailed. "I saw it with my own eyes. The boars are crossin' the river like it ain't even there."

Walther growled, "Bollocks."

A string of detonations ran through the center of the valley. Towers of flame the color of cobalt rose into the bruising sky. I heard –as through a bad speaker connection – the sound of steel striking steel. There was screaming.

The scout shook his head and heaved, "Got here fast as I could, sir. Swear to Nayru. They're out in them river beds an' they're ridin' straight for us hard as they can. This very second, sir!"

"How many?" Kael asked.

"Some hundreds, sir. I couldn't get an accurate count, sir. They moved more quickly than I thought possible. I stopped tryin' to count an' made for ya' as fast as young Riley here could carry me." He patted a trembling hand against his exhausted horse. "You're the rankin' officer on this flank, ain't ya'?" he asked. His tone was childlike, bordering on helpless.

Other riders of the 25th Cohort's command squad were muttering and stage-whispering over the cacophonous roar of combat. Kyle Estan flipped open the grille of his visor and blinked with astonishment. His pale face was briefly painted blue by distant alchemic fire.

"Sir?" the scout urged.

Sir Walther Kael's jaw worked as if he were chewing on some last, stubborn string of gristle. His face contorted and the scar running across its length turned white as bleached bone.

"Bollocks bollocks _bollocks_!" Kael swore. "Goddesses weep!"

He twisted the reins pressed between his gauntlets. Kael barked, "They weren't supposed to bloody come this way! Those flats are shite-awful to cross on foot an' a hundred times that by horse!"

"Perhaps their boars fare better, sir . . ." the scout said timidly.

"Did I look like I was talkin' to you, you buggerin' nitwit?" Kael roared. When the young man flinched and looked as if he might burst into tears, Walther shouted, "Ah, grow a godsdamned spine, ya' ninny. Ya' did your job well, even if it moves me half to madness. If ya' can, keep ridin'. Spread the word to every bloody officer ya' see. If not – ride east an' change out your horse." He nodded decisively. "I'll see to it that you're honored for this, lad."

The scout slinked off, looking shell-shocked. I watched with stunned dismay as Kael rounded up his officers, sergeants, and a handful of Prime Legionaries. He shouted the news in terse, unforgiving terms. The information spread out through the ranks of horsemen with all the welcome of a dysentery outbreak.

Kael surveyed the remaining troops to our north with naked anxiety and contempt. Without looking at him, Walther pointed at a rider whose face was half-hidden beneath a chop-suey mess of raw scars. Kael commanded, "How many horses do we have on this hillside, Banner-Sergeant?"

"Ah," the scarred man said thoughtfully, "I'd guess about five or six-hundred, sir. Three Cohorts-worth, all from the Third. The rest're foot an' grenadiers workin' yonder light shows."

"Of course," Kael hissed, voice knotted with frustration. "Why put fast-movers on the northern flank? Ain't gonna be an attack from the north. Certainly ain't gonna be mounted." He laughed despairingly.

Without another moment's hesitation, Sir Kael announced, "Here's how it is, lads: Horrible as it is, I _am _the rankin' officer on this end o' the entire army. An' if that there scout's story has even a shred o' truth to it, we need to ride now or risk those snout buggers gettin' the drop on us. So we ride. An' I have to ride with you."

When I realized the full import of what he had just commanded, the bottom fell out of my guts.

Kael said, "Men with gossip stones?"

At least ten men shouted, "Aye!" in response.

"Thump those damned things a thousand times an' give your adjutant a little kiss if you have to: I want you to get word out to the rest o' the army that the snouts're tryin' to flank us through the swamps. Tell 'em that we're goin' to meet 'em and that we'll likely need reinforcements to seal the deal. Prime Legionary Estan?"

"Sir!"

"On me. All other officers an' Primes! Rally your squads for immediate departure. I want every lad prepared to gallop in three minutes. We are joinin' the fray!"

_That _made them snap shit. Riders took off across the 25th's thickly spread line. The pinging became a brassy chorus of crickets. As the Captains and Prime Legionaries spread word to the cavalrymen, swords slid from scabbards and lances were unrolled out of oilcloth. Huge, beveled maces dropped into waiting gauntlets. Bowstrings were tested and the clasps on great quivers were let loose. Any visors that weren't down before now clattered closed. Ember-colored shadows drowned out the faces within. Hundreds of horses began to snort and grunt and neigh as they too caught on to the meaning of the sudden burst of activity.

As the combined cavalry of the flank prepared, Walther Kael turned to me one last time. He bitterly said, "We have to ride, Olsen. There's no other way. We're the only ones that're fast enough to cut the buggers off before they loop around behind the whole godsdamned army. They'll slice up our backs like a roast cuccoo."

"I thought you said we'd be okay here," I said. A moment later, I realized that I probably sounded like a disappointed six-year-old.

Walther grimaced and said, "Aye, I know. I buggered it up. I would send you back to the encampment, but if the lads were to see that. . ."

I wanted to whine – to plead – to make him do something to assuage the gnawing terror in my heart. Instead, I fell silent, jaw muscles clenching tighter and tighter. Sweat was starting to drench the remains of my hair. In the airless confines of a mail hood and an impermeable helm, that pooling perspiration would have nowhere to go but in a waterfall over my face.

"Well?" Sir Kael prodded. "Can you handle this, Olsen? Can I count on you?"

I swallowed. It had been so long since I had blinked that my eyeballs had begun to ache. The leather of my reins was slippery with sweat.

"Yes," I finally murmured. "Yeah. Come on, then. Let's do this."

"SIR WALTHER!"

Startled, Walther wheeled about so suddenly that his horse twitched in annoyance. "Bloody fuck!" he yelled.

"A-apologies, sir!" Prime Legionary Estan sputtered. "But I want you to know that we've sighted something out in those bogs. Looks a lot like what that scout told us about. It's getting' too dark down there to see it proper, but there're gray shapes, movin' like keese with their tails on fire."

Walther motioned to me, and it took me a moment to realize he was asking for his telescope back. I clumsily passed it to him and he immediately swept it up to his eye as he turned south. For a handful of seconds, he moved not a muscle. Then Sir Kael let off a shuddering groan.

"We need to move," he declared. "All right – Linus. You an' I will take point initial-like. Get 'em fired up an' then let the rest o' the lads pass us until we get to the middle o' the troop body. Then we stay safe – try not to engage. Understood?"

"Yeah," I stammered.

Sir Walther Kael nodded solidly, flipped the war-mask down over his face, and said, "Follow me, then." When he pulled about his horse and headed for the nodular crest of the hill, it was like following an avenging angel.

We arrived at a portion of ground that jutted out over the hillside. By the time we turned around, the first lines of horsemen were gathering up and gazing out over the gorge expectantly. Gazing at Walther and I, actually. Gazing at _me_.

Walther spoke with a reverberating steel quality that was actually rather disarming. "Give 'em something to ride to, 'Hero.' This is your moment to shine, Olsen. It's what you're here for."

Ah fucking hell, I thought. I licked my lips and found them rather salty.

I stood in the saddle. When my full weight pressed down into the stirrups, my entire body wobbled and I was certain that I was about to tumble to the hillside. I fought against vertigo and my own shaking limbs, found some facsimile of balance, and spread my fingers over the pommel of the Master Sword. I slid the weapon from its scabbard with a razorous sound so final it was like the hinge of a hangman's door.

I have no idea how many eyes were actually on me as I stood there, unsteady and trembling. I raised the Master of All Swords into the evening air. I stared into the faces and helms of some hundreds of waiting horsemen, and then lamely called out:

"For v-victory!"

The tendons in my right hand flexed. My fingers constricted about the sword – _my sword_ – as I felt _something else_ tighten within me. I looked up and watched as the last rays of Hyrule's sun grasped the Triforce etched on the blade's hilt. For a moment, the golden emblem shone fiercer than all the flame and death in all of Kerneghi Gorge.

This is it, Linus. This really is your moment.

So, I dug into that old well of strength and endurance – the same one that had allowed me to survive as long as I had. The one that I had dipped into when I stood up to Karrik and Elkan Fir-Bulbin. The very same cooling, beautiful, unstoppable wellspring that had compelled me to stride straight up to Bryan Jones and hand him his ass on a platter.

"FOR HYRULE!" I roared. "FOR HYRULE AND GLORY! FOR DIN AND NAYRU AND FARORE!"

Then, caught up in the exultation of the moment:

"LONG LIVE THE FUCKIN' KING!"

And for some reason, they roared back. Hundreds of voices intercut with the eager whinnies of their mounts. They beat swords on their tower shields and shook handfuls of arrows like maracas. Then they were all buckling down – drawing into their saddles – prepping their horses for the gallop over the hillside, into the belly of the gorge, and straight into the waiting lines of the enemy.

Beside me, Sir Walther Kael reached back and drew out the full length of the bastard sword strapped to his back. A very long, sharp sound of leather on steel. The blade itself was staggeringly tall and forged of metal so dark it looked like pure, polished iron. With one hand he hefted the sword and pointed it northward.

"RIIIIIDE!" he yelled, and his voice was resonant as a colossus.

We rode.

Melark seemed to flow over the lip of the slope and onto its grassy, undulating surface. Beside him, Walther's mare took the incline like it was level ground. Her powerful legs drove into a massive, graceful gallop. I slid forward in my saddle and listened as hundreds of hooves beat hillside behind us.

Despite it all, I found myself smiling.

There was no battle here – only those thoughts necessary keep control and give command. Only the thrill of motion and the joy of speed. There was only the pounding of hooves – the thin rush of wind – the strained breathing of horses – the clatter of loose armor and jangle of mail – the booming tumult of a battle that may as well have been taking place in another nation. Melark's ribs heaved against the press of my boots.

The valley floor, wide expanse of the river, and layered marshlands loomed up before us.

The exact moment our horses' hooves hit valley bottom, it became obvious just how pervasively wet this portion of the gorge was. Even at the very edge of the floodplain, we landed with a storm of _Splorch_ and _Glish _and _Squelch. _Mud and gravel were kicked up by the horsemen's manic advance.

The others were beginning to stream around me, passing me by and galloping triumphantly for the front of the formation. I realized that if I was matching Melark's pace to Walther, then Walther must already be slowing down.

Still! I was doing this! I was getting it! The entire charge was moving according to my pace! This was awe –

Melark plunged into a shallow creek. Lukewarm spray flew up over my pants. The shock caused the gelding to grouse mightily and shake his head about in frustration. Despite the comparative lightness of the outburst, I almost let go of the reins and ate shit. My ass levitated out of the saddle and my heart almost ripped out of my chest.

I thought: I've made a huge mistake.

Shit – oh shit! What was I doing? What in the name of God had possessed them to put me in a saddle?

So far, the bottom of the gorge had been nothing but tall grass, soft earth, and sandbars licked by rogue streams. Now we approached the lands where the Kerneghi River dispersed enough to become a series of winding creeks, feeding a wide stretch of wetlands. Ahead were denser and denser groves of gray-green willows. Among them were the towering, spiral-trunked trees I had spotted the day before. These turned out to be buoyed by huge, mound-like tangles of roots at their bases.

Okay, I though, stay calm. Stay focused. Just do exactly what Kael said and stick to him like glue.

Our outriders began to weave in and around the tree trunks. Their hoof-beats grew wetter and wetter, until there was a great, continuous cacophony of splashing.

The shadows were very deep, gray, and blurry here. Past the magic hour but still suspended in twilight. Just enough light to see; not enough light to see what you needed. I thought I saw curious phosphorescences in the shallow pools surrounding the glades.

My fear was infuriating. There was no time for it and no need to wallow, but it still sang in my limbs like an electrical current. At a time when I should have been directing every ounce of my attention into staying on my horse and giving him the right signals, I was expending useless energy battening down a ceaseless, nonsensical terror.

Did my body know something that my mind didn't? Probably not. I was probably just being a fucking pussy, truth be told.

Doesn't matter doesn't matter _doesn't matter_. Remember Walther's advice. _Forget how to think_. Focus only on what's in front of you and what needs addressing in the moment. Just look straight ahead and stay to Walther's side and _don't fuck around_.

Forget how to think. Right.

I inhaled air that was warm as a cooling pastry and tasted of river mud, saturated moss, and swamp gas. There were no sounds but the _sploosh_ and _thud_ of careering horseshoes. No sensations but the wind and the rough wool of my trousers and the slick leather of the reins.

None of that worrying and fearful self-recrimination meant a damned thing. As it turned out, I didn't have any time to think at all. I only had time to react.

We emerged from water-logged stands of willow and galloped through an open portion of the Kerneghi floodplain. Here, the actual Kerneghi River still flowed sluggishly as it fed the surrounding swamps and low sump basins. It crawled over a bed of polished black gravel and eddying seeps filled with pits of endlessly hungry mud. Tall waves of grass and reeds emerged from the shallowest pools or reigned atop hump-like islands. The marsh grass swished restlessly, as if it were quivering at our approach.

Across this watery expanse waited another line of dark trees. There were strange glowing patches among their trunks. Unknown bioluminescence. As we crashed onto the floodplain, the uneven edge of these marsh woods came alive with sudden movement.

And there they were.

Under the last tendrils of light cast by the fallen sun, Ganon's cavalry crashed toward us in a scimitar-shaped arc. There were no drums to announce them – nor did they shout a warning battle cry. They simply rode, and rode hard. Their number was hundreds strong.

Most came upon the same species of giant, slathering boars that I had first run into on that beautiful day on the Eldin Plains. Others were saddled atop war horses every bit as hale and well-trained as Hyrule's. As they barreled through the river shallows and marshy pools, the spray they kicked up was enormous.

The riders were bowed down with thick plate armor. Most were moblins, but mixed in their numbers were grinning bokoblins, wretched-looking Hylians, and even a few bellowing gorons. They leveled immense lances and leaned into their saddles as they came – faster now, _faster_.

The two forces approached one another with such speed that I didn't even have time to mull the next moments. One second the Protectorate riders appeared through the tree line; in the next, Hyrule's outriders leveled their weapons and readied for impact.

But Hyrule did not strike the first blow: From among the giant boars emerged wolfos like sleek crocodile-dogs, each bounding through the marsh grass as if they had been born for it. Their undulating forms slashed into the first groups of Hylian cavalry like ravenous shadows, and there was screaming.

I was certain then that Walther would pull up and draw me back from the encroaching enemies. At the sight of the snarling, yipping, delightedly howling wolfos – _dozens _of them! – I felt as if I had slipped headlong into a waking nightmare. Surely the knight would call a retreat. Surely he would keep me away from those lithe monsters.

Instead, Walther put his heels to his charger and shouted, "FOR HYRULE!" He raised his bastard sword and charged headlong into the unfolding melee.

I had no choice but to follow.

The thing about descending into a proper hand-to-hand fight is that it shrinks one's perspective. After a minute or two in that kind of melee, any understanding of the broader battle is impossible. All you can do is focus on the enemy before you and the patches of space to either side of your head. When you're lugging around a full helm, you can't even manage the latter.

In those next bloody, lunatic moments I could do little but stare through the helm's eye slits and try to keep Kael within my field of view. Beyond him, I knew that wolfos were leaping through the air with talons glistening dark red. I knew that huge boars barreled into the sides of horses, goring the animals and sending their riders crashing to their deaths. I knew that men of Hyrule were ramming lances through breast plates and crushing skulls with war hammers. I knew that men were yelling orders and bokoblins were laughing like psychopathic hyenas. I knew that the river splashed up so incessantly that we now trailed a bank of algae-smelling mist.

I knew these things intellectually – the way one knows that the next town over exists, even if one never visits. All I really cared about was keeping control of Melark even as we plunged deeper and deeper into the fray. The only person I gave a single shit about (other than myself) was Sir Walther Kael – a polestar set against a world gone mad.

Even the sudden chaos of two cavalry wings clashing has a rhyme and order. The battle between horsemen, boarmen, and wolfos riders had its own borders, contours, and undulating mass movements. The vast majority of the troop body was constantly in movement. As a seasoned veteran of such conflicts, Sir Walther Kael could interpret the flow of combat and understand where the constellation of dueling riders was moving.

Though Hylian cavalrymen openly slashed at moblins and Protectorate riders galloped past with arrows nocked, Walther and I were still some way out from the forefront of the fighting. In that regard, he was true to his word – we remained near the center of the 25th Cohort's formation. I saw now that Prime Legionary Estan rode with us as well, his body tight against the saddle and his halberd steady at his side. The three of us tore across the floodplain at a continual gallop, curving slightly to the left as we approached the slowing front ranks of the Protectorate.

A riderless boar burst through a clump of reeds, squealing and dotted with arrows. Steel rang on steel like an industrial symphony. Bodies of horses and horsemen alike fell and splashed through the surface of the river.

Suddenly, Walther pulled hard on his reins, shouting curses, and his charger peeled off to the right. Icy panic wrenched my hands, and dreadful moments later I followed close as I could at Walther's heels.

We took off at such a speed that I worried at Melark's labored, spittle-flecked breathing. Within moments, I lost the final vestiges of my bearings. Bodies; armor; weapons; trees; cane; reeds; jutting rock formations; butchered carcasses – all flew past the corners of my eyes in nonsensical streaks and blurs. Then we passed into darker climes. Once more we galloped beneath the boughs of dripping trees.

I found myself following Sir Kael through the jumbled gloom of a mangrove swamp. Though the water was deeper and the darkness more stifling than ever, we still rode at a breakneck pace. Shapes rushed in and out of the trees, rounding their trunks and looping crazily about their exposed roots. Sounds of combat echoed through the glades as if they were a series of connected torture chambers.

I wasn't even certain what we were doing here until a boomerang arced overhead, trailing airborne splatters of blood and an oscillating whistle. Then the shriek of giant hogs pitched louder and more urgent. The resonant din of battle blasted through the marsh. Low shadows zipped through the trees like rats. It seemed that the main site of our engagement had shifted. For the first time, Walther, Kyle Estan, and I found ourselves plunged straight into the booming heart of mounted combat.

Well . . . _they _did. I more or less just tagged along.

I rode through what seemed a series of still images:

A Hylian in full armor planted a spear through the guts of a bokoblin atop a wasted-looking horse. The bokoblin yowled in agony as his intestines slithered into his saddle.

Mewling boars raced on either side of my companions, their riders seemingly oblivious to our presence.

Arrows impacted tree trunks with the hollow sound of wood thrumming against wood.

To my left, a horse's head – messily severed just behind the ears – spun in a corkscrew through the air.

Walther pulled up, and then began to lunge and chop with his great sword, taking apart two moblins like they were made of wet papier-mâché. Both Legionary Estan and I actually streaked past him and had to haul our mounts around abruptly. The movement kicked up a tidal wave of spray. Cool, fetid droplets infiltrated my helmet and slid over the contours of my lips.

An arrow screamed so close to my face that I felt its path through the steel of my helm.

Somewhere out in the half-darkness, someone began to laugh. I couldn't tell whether it was human or moblin, Hylian or Protectorate.

I saw a trio of pale green lights dance up in the boughs of a passing cottonwood. Fairies, I thought. No – fireflies. Just normal, garden-variety fireflies – totally heedless of the bloodletting taking place below their courtships.

A brief reverie, gone within a microsecond. Then I had to watch Kyle Estan die.

The bow-legged cavalryman was on my right one moment. In the next, he tilted back in his saddle, blood gushing like a fountainhead from the space between his breastplate and the back of his helmet. An arrowhead and most of its attendant shaft – drenched in dripping red – protruded from his neck.

Then he was gone, his still-warm corpse borne away by his panicked, galloping steed.

There was no time to mourn. There was no time to fear. Everything was happening so _fast_ – every new thing coming so quick it flared through my vision like fragments of a dream just before waking. Difficult to process; almost impossible to remember.

Walther Kael emerged again within my field of vision. Filigrees of gore ran alongside the elegant enameling atop his armor. Wet bits of red dotted his war mask.

"Linus!" he shouted. "On me, man! _On me_!"

We rode to meet each other as men died all around us. I could hear him gasping for breath as he approached. His mare was scratched across its snout. Blood matted its hair.

"Estan's dead," I wheezed. There was no emotion in the words. I may as well have been reporting the temperature.

Kael's war mask shook languidly. "No time. Losing track of the battle," he puffed. "Follow me. Fight if ya' must, but try to stay out of it."

The knight didn't ask if I understood – simply he urged the charger forth and, within moments, we were again in motion. We had to steer around the chopped cadaver of a particularly large boar, which lay in the stagnant water like a hairy molehill. Then it was off again, following the tide of battle into the unknown.

We rode as if possessed past unhorsed men fighting personal duels with rotund moblin warriors. The stink of blood grew thick as the marsh's own corpulent scent. Opposing columns of riders crossed our path, as if we were simply fording a particularly heavy night of traffic. I could see fires flickering distantly and wondered if they marked the main battle or if they were simply more evidence of the cavalry conflict's insensate savagery.

Not all of the riders we ran beside were oblivious. Some of the Hylians peeled off their routes and formed up with Walther, yelling for commands. When he shouted back, I didn't catch what he said. However, the riders stayed on – three at first, then five in all. They attempted to form a perimeter around Walther and I as we rode.

The trees began to thin and the swamp's consistency to thicken. Though I had no idea of our destination – or even if we _had _a destination – I pushed Melark through it. About us, the fighting was starting to loosen up. More boars shot away from us or ran perpendicular to our paths than were rushing the scattered Hylian lines.

But then there came a feral howl, joined in turn by others from beyond the groves. Out of the thick shadows before us burst a writhing mob of wolfos riders. At least a dozen of them came leaping and bounding through the sludgy waters. All around me, the cavalrymen attached to Kael held their weapons at the ready. Kael howled something incomprehensible and led them pell-mell toward the snarling line – a decision so suicidal I briefly questioned the man's sanity.

And yet, I still followed after him.

Have to help, I thought desperately. Can't let all of them die for me without lifting a finger. I have to fucking help!

I tried to pull the Master Sword from its scabbard with my left hand and found the movement almost completely encumbered. Ahead of me, Sir Walther Kael dropped his sword like a falling beam and split the lead wolfos rider's skull open with a coconut-like crack. The other Hylians met the enemy, sword to talon and spear to spear. I had all of five seconds before Melark's momentum pulled me straight into the fray.

I wrestled the sword out; fought against the dead weight of the shield strapped to my forearm; realized I was pulling Melark to the left; tried to switch the blade into my right hand; watched as the squad of wolfos riders spun about and began loping deeper into the marsh. Kael and his riders gave chase.

Still in the bumbling process of transferring the Master Sword into my right hand, I realized that Melark now charged in a different direction entirely. My heart crunched. I tried desperately to pull the gelding back, but the movement was all wrong. Confused and agitated, Melark reared up, stamped, spun.

I watched another wave of wolfos riders detach from a thicket of spiny, unidentifiably alien trees. They crept out into the clearing where Kael had engaged the first group of wolfos.

Sir Walther Kael had his back to these newcomers. He drove his horse after the survivors of the first assault. The knight trailed a bestial cry of blind, maddened fury.

I started to shout, but it was just one more task I piled onto my overwhelmed frame. I couldn't turn Melark, switch the sword, and warn Kael all at once. I seized. I choked. I felt my body go rigid as a wooden doll.

And then I saw it. There, among the wolfos who even now sprinted smooth as razors toward Walther Kael's rear: A wisp of white hair; a flash of dead-gray eyes; the twilit gleam of a rapier's edge. The ragged edge of a greatcoat the mottled color of a floating corpse.

_Him_, I thought. Helpless terror inverted the world.

It didn't matter that my glimpse of Karrik Fir-Bulbin only lasted an instant. Nor did it matter that he vanished from sight apparently without seeing me. Nor did it matter that Walther Kael glanced back just in time to see these new riders before their talons were upon him.

All that really matters was that I hesitated. I allowed the fear to take hold of me . . . and I failed.

I didn't see what happened next.

To this day I don't know what hit me. A club, maybe; or a rock from a sling; or perhaps a poorly thrown boomerang. All I do know is that it struck me in the back of my breastplate so hard that I swore that I felt the metal distend against my spine. The breath smacked from my lips and I went flailing.

My vision wheeled. I received a distorted, mold-green view of branches extending above me. A strand of Spanish moss tickled moistly across my forehead.

The entirety of my body snapped forward – even those parts below my waist that should have stayed stock still. My legs flipped the stirrups backward and my free hand yanked the reins as if they might somehow steady my ringing bones. I was dimly aware that I swept the Master Sword about with my other hand in random idiot patterns, as if I were trying to conduct with it.

Melark screamed. The horse bucked substantially. Already overwhelmed by the mad dash I had put him through and the amateurish instructions I conveyed, the gelding freaked out. He bolted. We took off together in a cloud of shared delirium.

I must have lost my shield soon after that, because its weight no longer impeded me as I tried (in vain) to gain control of my horse. Tree trunks, branches, and other riders flew past with abandon. I tottered in my saddle and was whipped about like a ragdoll.

To my credit, I didn't make a sound.

Out in the gloom-ridden blur of the river lands, a black claw loomed. A branch lower than any other. I may have had time to blink, but that's debatable. Within picoseconds of first sighting it, the branch (oh, my old nemesis) took me in the shoulder and propelled me back across the saddle, boots sliding from the stirrups.

And all of a sudden, I was airborne. I knew this because my inner ear began to send jolting waves of nausea straight into my stomach, which was now somewhere below my Adam's apple. When I opened my eyes, I saw a senseless motion blur. I may have watched Melark streak off without me, kicking up his hind legs and howling with rage – but this may have been a memory I filled in on my own, much later.

I realized finally that I had been thrown from my horse. My first reaction was not terror, but embarrassment. Way to fuck even _that _up, Linus. I briefly thought about how much shit I would receive for this. Then again, it was difficult to think about much of anything as I sailed weightless through the twilight.

A gray wall rushed at me like some world-spanning tombstone. Parts of it shimmered with ripples of pale light. The river. Then the sky stretched before me like a revelation as I twisted one last time.

Something sharp-edged and hard punched me in the back. All the air fled from my body. I flipped end over end.

There was a dim splash. An itching coldness. Ringing darkness. I heard hooves and flowing water and the moaning cries of the damned. A storm of bright voices and the hopeful clank of steel – receding, as if down an old brick tunnel. Then nothing.

I woke, sputtering. My eyes beheld the sky, overlaid by the silhouette-fissures of scattered tree branches. Leaves glistened and trembled in the breeze.

I'm fairly certain that the fall knocked me out. For thirty seconds or several minutes – who knows? Nonetheless, when I gasped and sat up from the muddy shallows, it was with a sense of horrifying disorientation.

It couldn't have been long – the sky was still the color of late-summer plums and streaks of orange sunset clung tenaciously to the west. The sounds of battle resonated over the breadth of the valley. I smelled smoke and blood and the mineral wash of river water.

I stood shakily. Liquid sluiced from the sleeves of my doublet. A thin whine stung at my ears. My limbs shook and every inch of my skin tingled, as if I had just stuck a pen in an electrical socket. I blinked and coughed and looked about me with painful resignation.

Melark was nowhere in sight.

In fact, _no one _was in sight. I stood on the verge of the deep swamps, out where the Kerneghi flowed more like an undisciplined lake than a proper river. A wide, watery expanse dotted with trees and islands thick with marsh grass. Nothing moved but the burbling surface of the water and the restless sway of tree limbs.

Even the bedlam of the cavalry battle had left me behind. Standing there, shallow river mud sucking at the heels of my boots, I found myself utterly alone.


	40. 40

**40**

Okay, I thought. Don't panic.

I panicked.

"Fuck!" I gasped. I dashed forward, realized I had no idea of even the direction I was running, and shuddered to a stop with a goopy splash. "Fuck fuck fuck."

I winced and blinked and tasted charred copper in the back of my throat. Little starbursts of pain kept spattering against my skull.

"Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuck!" I growled.

Stop. Just stop, you fucking idiot. Stop . . . and get a hold of yourself.

I replied: Fuck you! If anything, I need to be _more _freaked out!

A loon more adventurous than his already-fled cousins whistled mournfully through the tree tops. Something exploded out in the remote reaches of the Kerneghi Valley. It sounded like far-off thunder on a summer's evening.

I took a scrabbling breath, and then forced myself to close my eyes and take another. As anxiety attacks went, this one was at least somewhat justified. Still, it wouldn't do to totally lose my head.

It was time to take stock. Where I now stood was a kind of border place in the boggy northern reaches of the Kerneghi River Valley. The river flowed in and out of tree-thick marshes and mud flats, in no hurry to arrive anywhere. Everything smelled by turns, either river-rock clean or fetidly swampy. The day hovered in that nether realm between color-soaked evening and imperishable night. Hints of blood and napalm stirred the air.

My toes were quite cold. No wonder: Everything below my ankles was soaked to saturation. The sensation of cool dread that dribbled through my extremities wasn't helping matters.

Bodies were scattered everywhere. They stared from beneath the water and clutched stiffly at the sky. All shapes; all sizes; all species. Headless bokoblins. The dismembered parts of Hylians. Horses fallen rigid and pathetic among the roots of willows. A weirdly peaceful, slumped moblin, who had been wearing an elaborate red and orange robe when he died. The corpse of a wolfos lay twisted about a tree-stump, its lower jaw missing and its limbs cranked at grotesque angles.

All right, I mused, it looks like I'm in the ass-end of nowhere. There's something to be said for that, I guess. But how am _I _doing? What's going on with Linus the Hero? Well, I was intact. At least I had that going for me.

All told – and despite that incessantly ringing headache – it didn't seem like my injuries were all that bad. Bumped and bruised to be sure, but not nearly as serious as it could have been. Oh how I ached, though. I could only hope that would pass, and pass quickly.

I thought about the Prophet's pledge that I would come to no harm during this battle. Well, I mused, you fucked up on that one, o faceless weirdo.

Almost thoughtlessly, I began to pat my body down from my knees to the crown of my head. Absent foreboding propelled my fingers.

Something was missing. Some _things_.

I had been dimly aware that my small, pentagonal shield had taken its leave of me during Melark's last wild ride. However, I now had to face up to the fact that other items had vanished sometime before I pulled myself out of the muck.

First was my beautiful helmet, which had apparently flown off during the fall. A cursory inspection of the area revealed no green that wasn't marsh grass. Certainly, no gold shone from embossed oak leaves.

Well, at least the chainmail hood had remained on – cold and dripping as it now was. And the potion belt was still snug about my waist. Attached to that was my scabbard, and . . .

Wait.

Wait wait wait oh _fuck_. Where the hell was the Master Sword?

Well, it's certainly not in your hand! the Other Me cackled.

There was a small, cathartic victory when I didn't throw up.

I swung about in the half-darkness, feverishly searching for any sign of the blade. Of courseI had lost it as I fell. I could barely get control of it even while I was in the saddle. I sloshed about in a circle. Insect noises emerged from the marshlands. My breathing was haggard.

Where the hell was it? Where in hell – oh.

Oh, thank God: The Master Sword protruded forlornly from the mud a half-dozen yards away. Its blue hilt shone darkly in the gloaming. I dashed through the water and mud pots, stomped slimily to the sword, and ran a hand over its pommel. If I had lost this, I mulled, everything would've been for nothing.

I wondered – not for the first time – if I _could _lose it. Would it always miraculously find its way back to me? The idea was, if anything, rather reassuring. I cleaned the blade as best I could and then slid it into its waiting scabbard.

Now, then. Now. Now I figure out what to do next. Figuring out where I was seemed like the first step . . . but I really, definitely needed a plan. Where did I need to go? Who – other than Sir Walther Kael himself – should I look for? And seriously, where the hell was I?

Down in the belly of the valley, with the light failing and a brain full of angry hornets, effective path-finding was next to impossible. I guessed that west was roughly to my left (if the lingering duskglow was any indication), so I could at least deduce general directions. And if the sounds of battle resounded distantly behind me . . .

Should I head that way, then? Or farther north, in the hope that I'd eventually cross paths with Sir Kael's cavalry?

I considered just staying there, stuck to the spot, until someone came and found me. Doubtless Walther had already noticed my absence from the cohort and would dispatch someone to look for me.

Unless he's dead, I thought. Unless they're all dead.

Don't think that, I admonished. You don't know what really happened.

So.

Well, shit.

I decided to walk south. At the very least, the dim sounds of steel ringing, men shouting, and animals screaming confirmed that people still existed there.

And so I hoisted my belt, checked my remaining belongings, and made certain that my chainmail hood was secure. I decided roughly where I thought the cardinal directions were and turned south. I began to trudge through the region between river and swamp, serenaded by insect trills and strange, reptilian whistles. Within a minute of walking, a new sound joined the natural ones – a high, metallic chirping.

_Ping-ping!_

When I recognized the sound, I doubled my pace. Only Hylian troops carried whatever it was that made that noise! My boots kicked up fountains as I ran toward the oscillating chirrup.

_Ping-ping! Ping! Ping-ping-ping!_

I found it half-engulfed in gray, marshy sludge. A bulbous, pill-shaped brown stone, with the pattern of a weeping eye carved upon one of its faces. When I reached down fished it out of the mire, I noticed that a small hole had been drilled through the center of the design, where the pupil would be. The insistent pinging echoed through this opening.

_Ping! Ping-ping ping-ping!_

What the hell? I wondered. It wasn't very heavy, now that I thought about it. It must have been hollow. I wiped mud away from the front of the artifact and squinted into the dark center of its eye. At first, I couldn't see a damned thing. Then – as the last light shifted or my eye adjusted – I could just make out a tiny, silver object vibrating upon a taut string.

_It is apparently a basic alchemy – but quite useful. Legionary mages use a variation of it to send simple messages on the front lines._

Ah. So, this was what Zelda had referred to. It wasn't just a bell, then. I was holding a full-on portable telegraph.

I considered taking it with me, so that I might pass it off to the first Hylians I saw. Then I realized that I had no way of quieting its incessant ringing. I would alarm everyone in the vicinity of my approach.

No. Better to not risk it. I slid the stone into the crook of the first tree I passed. Maybe somebody could pick it up after the battle. Hopefully the _right _somebody.

This last thought cemented in my mind the notion that Protectorate troops were just as – if not more – likely to be skulking about as Hyrule's. If I was going to travel toward allies, I needed to be cautious about it.

So be it.

If many years of pot smoking had done anything (besides retard my short-term memory), it was teach me how to sneak around a bit. That evening, I put my knowledge into motion. I crept behind every stand of swamp grass and through every field of reeds I came to. I skirted where the river became an avenue and stayed to the island-pocked (and even solid, where possible) sections of valley floor. I crouched at every junction and every island's edge to wait a bit and listen.

My forbearance paid off. I was creeping through a westerly section of outright swamp, where islands filled to the brim with vegetation sat amidst a series of shallow, murky canals. The echo of running water was omnipresent here as it sluiced through reeds and washed about the roots of encroaching willows. When I reached the edge of a grove of these same trees I stopped, kneeled, and listened intently. Within moments, I heard the approach of boots.

I slipped behind between the willows smooth as oiled silk.

Not five seconds after I embedded myself in the grove's waiting shadows, I received a demonically familiar question:

"Click-chik?"

I wheeled about, hand already fumbling for the pommel of the Master Sword. I froze. About a yard away, a long, vaguely glowing shape had reared up like a snake. Its compound eyes swirled with soft patches of bioluminescent green. Long antennae swung at me inquisitively. It was, so far as I could tell, the same species as the creature I had encountered in the Lost Woods.

"Chik-a-click?" it inquired. Its antennae wiggled sleepily.

"You again!" I hissed.

It drew back from my voice – a startled, sinuous motion. Its glowing eyes swirled brighter. "Glick!"

I growled, "Oh, you bastard. You're going to give me away!"

"Chik-chik-chik!" the centipede replied.

I stood, ever-conscious of how exposed that made me, and forked two fingers at the giant arthropod. "You need to work on your fucking manners," I said.

The curious thing clicked, clacked, and turned to scuttle back into the willow grove. Its ghost-green form disappeared under a tangle of roots. It left only slightly offended-sounding chatter in its wake.

Not a moment too soon: The sound of boots splashing through water had become too loud for comfort. Even though each _sploosh_ sounded to me like a grenade going off, it soon became clear that the boots' owners intended to be secretive. Though they were doing a dismal job of it, they still came with voices almost comically hushed.

I heard: ". . . ey! Oy, oy! That's me lad you're talkin' about! You can talk about his hoor of a ma all ya' like, but you'll talk better about the fruit of me loins!"

Pressing my body against the high roots of the closest tree, I peered out into the canals and the grassy islands spreading between them. As the voices and liquid movement grew louder, I finally saw a shadow appear from around one of the marshy hillocks. Then another. And another. These formless wraiths resolved into hunch-backed bodies and snout-dominated faces. Three moblins slogged through the marsh not a dozen paces away.

I felt my breath hitch and my chest tighten. The smart move would have been to hide completely. Instead, I lingered in that position and watched the Protectorate squad come trudging my way.

The moblin at the lead of the group was an odd one. He was quite tall and angular for a moblin, possessed of skin the blotchy color of raw sewage and a smirk like a pained rictus. He wore a chainmail shirt and had several weapons hanging from his belt. Despite his company, he spoke a gruff stream of Hylian. His had been the first words I heard.

Behind him came two moblins of similar height and build, more along the model with which I was familiar. One had gray skin; the other, coal black. Both wore similar uniforms to their leader, though the gray-skinned mob carried with him a tall pike.

"This ain't bad country, innit?" the tall moblin commented. "Ain't no Peoples' Lands, no sir, but I wouldn't mind bringin' me sons here when it belongs to us."

The black-skinned moblin snorted. "You think they let we own this?" he spat with an accent thick as paste. "Toj mah doh."

They were so close now I could all but smell them. Come to think of it, _maybe I could_.

"O' course, mate!" the tall moblin laughed. "Ain't that what this is all about?"

The gray moblin coughed, "C'mon, c'mon then! Hurry it up! If we don't report back soon, Darknut'll have our shinbones for tent pegs!"

"Still better than havin' to face the Knuckle," the tall moblin grunted. He shuddered. "Bloody hell. I gouged out a fellow's eyes with me bare fingers once. Bastard killed my cousin, he did. And I swear by all the gods above and below that lookin' at _that one _is just like starin' into those empty sockets all over again."

The band passed out of sight, and the conversation was lost to the growing din of battle and the rill of water through the reeds.

I must have waited five minutes before I moved a muscle. My breath whistled between my lips. I became very familiar with the sensation of those willow roots pressed against my shoulders.

Soon enough, I skulked out of the lee of that sheltering tree and began stalking the edge of the glen. I slid into the channels and tried to chart a course away from the direction the merry group of moblins had been heading. It would probably take me further west than I wanted to go, but at least I would avoid the general trajectory of the moblin scouts.

I struck back into the undulating marshlands. As I walked, the water levels seemed to rise and drop without rhyme or reason. Sometimes the surface of the water barely licked the tops of my boots. Others, I waded up to my knees in increasingly milky water. Algae and fluttering bits of Spanish moss oozed over my hands. Unseen creatures made unnerving mating calls on the river's shore. When I wasn't worrying idly about leeches, I wondered if the growing sounds of war meant I was drawing closer to the battle or if the battle was growing closer to me.

I saw hints of other giant centipede-things as they writhed through depths of the marsh. Their odd, dim glow would curl up tree trunks and slink through their branches.

Ahead of me somewhere, a bright orange light flared. A heartbeat later, there followed an immense explosion. I actually felt the heat of it blow through the foliage.

Twice more I hid from sounds of approach. The first time, I was never actually certain that I had heard grass parting and mail clinking. On the second occasion, I _know _that I heard someone crashing through the swamp pools. Whether enemy or ironic friend, I never actually saw them. The harried movement grew distant and quiet and then ceased altogether.

It was soon after this last incident – after I crawled out of my hiding spot in a hollow stump – that I looked to the sky with a squint. A point of light had irresistibly caught my attention.

At first, I thought what I saw was just an over-bright star. Perhaps a meteor, as it was moving. A lone spark, curving over the expanse of the sky. No more than a few moments passed before I realized that it was, in fact, a fairy.

It was heading in a somewhat southeasterly direction. As I watched it come, it dropped in altitude and buzzed quickly between the branches of a low sycamore. It glowed a hot, pale blue and flew in a series of graceful arcs and spirals. It was, I realized, moving just as cautiously as I was trying to. It descended to about ten feet above the ground and continued on its way, a dim little insect amid the reeds.

I briefly considered calling out, but then remembered the _other _fairies that had swept from the Protectorate lines. There was no way of knowing for certain who that little ball of light was loyal to.

I quickly decided that I should try to follow the sparky creature. Even if the fairy belonged to the enemy, I might still be able to glean something from its path. In any event, it was going in roughly the same direction that I had been.

Again I uncoiled from a hidey-hole and took off quiet as you please. I tried to keep the fairy always within my line of sight – which was easier said than done, since it seemed to be running at less than half of a fairy's usual light output. It helped that the tiny creature was apparently preoccupied with whatever its mission was. As it pressed forward, it never seemed to notice me sneaking about trees, leaping from an island, or slipping into a field of reeds.

The fairy would stop from time to time, hovering expectantly at a crossroads. I wondered why it didn't just fly above the valley, then realized that the fairy was almost certainly out on spy business. It was probably taking what it thought was the stealthiest route.

Good. Maybe it'd lead me straight to Hyrule's front lines.

The fairy came upon a clearing and paused once more. A screen of bushes cut off my view of the west, and the south was cut off by the rotting hulk of a fallen tree. An immense field of olive-green marsh grass opened to the east. The earth was muddy and gray, flecked with wisps of wilted-looking grass. A stone like a rough grave marker leaned near the center of the ovoid space.

I lowered myself into a coiled crouch within a thick stand of cattails at one of the clearing's rough corners. Cold, viscous mud clung to my boots. A thick, loamy stink steadily rose from the muck beneath my soles. The cattails smelled rank and sweet in the humid twilight.

The fairy started east, and then bobbled west. I heard it emit a thin, almost frustrated noise. Why it simply didn't just soar over that damned tree, I'll never know. In its hesitation, it made a critical mistake.

A big, distorted shape unfolded and sprang from between tangle of bushes. I saw beefy arms outstretch. Hands like bad dreams flexed. The fairy bobbed up, startled, and suddenly those three-fingered paws shut on it. Sharp blue light streamed out between the clenched lines of the moblin's knuckles.

"GOTCHA'!"

A high, female scream split the clearing.

I blinked in astonishment. Without a doubt, the grinning creature now hunched in the clearing was the same tall, brownish moblin whose band I had just narrowly avoided. He leaned forward and stared enrapt at the small, writhing form clutched between his hands.

He happily growled, "Oy, lads! Come n' see what I just caught us!"

The fairy screeched, "Hey! Let go!" That voice was undeniably young and feminine.

From the same bushes that their leader had pounced out of, familiar black and gray moblins appeared. Though they glanced at the struggling fairy with interest, they also had a jittery, eager edge to their movements.

"We ain't got time for games," the gray moblin grunted.

"Naw, mate!" the tall moblin laughed. "Caught us a little friend, I did!"

He directed an eye down at the just barely visible body beating at his grip. "Now, now, kind fellow. We humble snouts're just curious as to who you're servin' under."

"Fuck off, you mob prick!" the fairy yelled. She added, to no one in particular: "Help! HELP!"

Shaking his head in mock sadness, the tall moblin clucked his tongue and said, "Aw, lads. That's a shame. I'd say this bug's one o' the king-humpers."

Oh fuck, I thought. She was on my side all along. I ducked lower and felt something start to constrict in my guts.

The fairy yowled, "I'll kill you, you fucks!"

"Egads!" gasped the brown-skinned moblin. "What a tongue, lads! Course, I ain't even sure you lot _have _tongues . . . I guess there's one way to find out, eh?"

I watched as the knuckles of the moblin's big hands pressed inward. Tendons snapped tight. He smiled, flexed, and _squeezed_. The fairy screamed.

The tall moblin cackled, "Hahaha! 'Ey, lads. This here's a rare pleasure. Squeeze 'em just right – _here_ – an' their head pops!"

Both of his companions leaned forward expectantly as he applied more and more pressure with his hands. The fairy's struggles were flailing and reckless. I saw the outline of sticklike arms scrabbling over the moblins' oily skin, trying to find any kind of purchase.

I felt my own hand move of its own accord (at least, that's what it seemed like at the time), sliding down to grab the pommel of the Master Sword. I have to help, I thought . . . and almost instantly felt like a child.

No. You can't. Not now. Three against one. Trained soldiers against Sir Amateur the Bruised.

Did that matter when you stood down Karrik Fir-Bulbin?

My heart pumped in terrible overdrive.

The fairy thrashed and cried. Her wings made cellophane crackling noises. Every sound she made was underlined with a brittle trill. In her anguish, the tiny woman twisted my direction. For a moment, I was more than certain that I could see the fairy's huge, iridescent eyes, which were the color of obsidian. I could clearly – and irrevocably – see a mortal desperation in their glossy depths.

If you go out there now, they will kill you. You will die and everything Walther Kael and all the others have done to protect you will be for nothing.

"HELP! FUCKIN' – HELP!" the fairy shouted helplessly.

The gray moblin chortled, "Ah, we gots a feisty one here, lads."

"Aye, Drim. Looks like we'll have to pull a leg or two off before we get to the main event, eh?"

Porcine laughter all around.

I thought about Kyle Estan – dead in seconds, slumped in the saddle. I thought about that nameless goron bath attendant, murdered in the tunnels below Oloro Town. I thought about the dead Shiekah girl and the final terror that had been etched in her eyes.

"Stop strugglin', pretty."

"STOP – PLEASE –"

I thought about Malora Lon, crouched below her family's wagon as she called desperately out to an empty prairie for succor.

"HELP!"

I thought about the Nameless Woman who had caught my fall at Jeff Ramirez's party. Ten-thousand years ago, surely. I thought about her smiling lips as they had nuzzled the back of my neck. _Good luck, hero_.

I took a breath. I felt sweat trickle over my forehead and run past my nose. I took another breath. Then I took one final breath and did what I needed to do:

I burst out of the cattails howling like a madman.

The Master Sword was already in my hand.

The moblins' jovial bit of torture stopped dead in the moment before I struck. They stared uncomprehending as I sprinted the short distance between us, dripping wet and roaring, sword held above my head like an axe.

My mind went blank. All I knew in the world was the desire for those stinking pigs to their hands off that poor girl. All I saw was the gray-skinned moblin, turning too slowly, looking as if he were trying to decide whether to lower his pike. I dropped my blade as if chopping a block of wood.

In the next moment, the gray moblin knew exactly whether he should use that pike of his. Too bad it was too late: Blood already spurted from the grand laceration across his chest and neck. A groan spat through the moblin's purplish lips. His weapon dropped from one hand as his other swung uselessly. As the pike clattered to the ground, its owner coughed, gargled, rolled his eyes, and slumped to the earth like a trash bag full of blubber. Not dead yet, but he soon would be.

The other two Protectorate soldiers shot back instinctively, shouts and dreadful foreign oaths on their tongues. Wide-eyed and startled, the tall moblin let go of his prey. I thought I might have seen the Hylian fairy fall to earth. Her bright glow faded and she vanished from view. I was left to deal with the remaining moblin bastards on my own.

I dodged back as well, holding my sword with both hands. Its tip dribbled thick, dark droplets of red. "Back the fuck up!" I snarled.

"Drim ka brema," murmured the black moblin. He drew a dirk from his belt. It was so big and triangular that it looked like an iron trawl.

The bony moblin also readied his weapon: a grim-looking, six-sided mace, which he unhooked from his belt. Its head alone looked like it weighed a dozen pounds. The moblin growled, "Ya' got balls, palebelly. Still, that were the wrong move."

They rushed me. Mindlessly, I swept my sword up at a diagonal. Both moblins darted back, jumpy and nonplussed, tittering nervously. On the ground, the gray moblin's blood soaked the bare clay. He made a sound (_Glarfgle_!) and tried one last time to prop himself up. It worked about as well as the rest of his struggles.

The tall moblin spun his mace experimentally, as if testing the weight of a new conducting baton. A cement-colored tongue flicked over his fat lips and slid across the corner of one of his blunt tusks. His companion hunched low and tensed. Those dark little eyes never left me.

I tried to plant my left heel. Instead, I found my body tipping backward as my boot slipped through a slick patch of mud. I staggered. The instant I lost my balance, the moblin with the dirk was lunging forward.

Well. It was an interesting life, at least, I thought.

I swayed; I reeled; I spun my arms like a circus clown. The dirk-wielder made a frustrated noise and stabbed blindly at me once, twice, three times. Each attack came up too short as I wheeled back across a high-viscosity bed of clay. He tried to bob and weave in to slash at me, only to scuttle back grimacing as he avoided a sweep of my pinwheeling sword.

You lucky fucker! the Other Me laughed. Salvation through total fucking incompetence!

Now I dug my right heel in and felt my body shudder as the movement killed my momentum. I stopped with a muddy farting noise and was in forward motion less than a second later.

In the two steps before I was again toe-to-toe with the black moblin, I wondered where the fairy had gone. The sputtering fade of her aura had clenched at my heart with a ferocity that I found both surprising and highly motivating.

No time. Task at hand, Olsen.

I swept the Master Sword in a whooshing baseball swing. The black moblin jumped back and did his own version of the mud-dance across a spit of ground-creeping moss. His boots scooted almost comically as they tried to find sure purchase. Was this a fight or a Three Stooges routine?

At some point unbeknownst to me, a smile had curled my lips.

(_And out to my left, the moblin with the mace was crouched almost furtively. His bony frame heaved with each overexcited breath._)

The Master Sword swooped, chopped, and stabbed. Each attack struck nothing but humid air, but succeeded in driving the dirk-wielder back another step or two. He sneered, clicked some moblin word deep in his throat, and hopped left toward his hesitant comrade. I side-stepped with him and then sprang back out of the way of a halfhearted thrust of the black moblin's knife. As the momentum of his attack brought him my way, I struck.

My next movement wasn't a large one. Just a short, noncommittal poke of the sword. I intended it to do little more than corral the fighter back into the taller moblin. What the endgame of such an outcome was, I really can't say.

Nonetheless, I watched with astonishment as the Master Sword slipped between the moblin's arms and pierced his mail, right above his heart. It was only when blood spurted out of his chest like a sprinkler that he even registered shock at being wounded.

"I am killed," he said matter-of-factly. "Palebelly ka breman, shtur. Fuck . . ." The moblin stumbled, dropped his weapon to the ground, and clamped both hands over the gushing puncture wound.

I blinked as if I didn't quite believe what I was seeing. I _didn't _believe what I was seeing. There hadn't been enough power behind that jab to even nick the poor bastard. At least, that's what I had thought. The mail – which didn't look to be of poor quality at all – had simply split like fresh marzipan.

As I stared, dumbfounded at my own handiwork, the moblin grunted, dropped to one knee, and focused every ounce of his attention on the pumping chest wound. In the poor light, the blood seeping between his fingers was a deep burgundy. It was as if he were attempting to stop up a leak on a cask of wine, rather than keep himself from bleeding out.

"You palebelly son of a _whore_!"

The tall moblin didn't even wait until his companion had fully fallen – he was on me in a flash. He leapt around the sagging black moblin with a snarl. As he approached, I finally noticed that an indecipherable, dust-blue tattoo sat below his right eye.

I tried to skip backward, out of his rampaging path. Whatever grace and agility had possessed me in the minutes previous now fled. The heel of my boot caught something all too solid – the tombstone-like rock sticking out of the middle of the clearing. I had time for a single thought – _Shitwaffles!_ – before dropping ass over tea kettle to the wet ground.

From my position on the ground, elbows sinking into soft clay, I watched as the tall moblin stretched up over the indigo sky. His eyes were rheumy wads of hatred. The moblin grabbed his mace with both hands and wrenched it up over his head. He clearly intended to finish this with a single blow.

I instinctively pulled my shoulders and rolled left. My eyes clenched shut as my face pressed briefly into the mud. There was a _thwoosh _that fanned hot air over my head, followed by an immense _splud!_ of moist impact.

"Ox-shite!" the moblin croaked.

I rolled straight into a wall of odiferous sawgrass. The dull razors on each frond itched against my left hand. With an effort that sent knotting agony down my back, I threw my legs out and leapt back to my feet.

And not a moment too soon: The moblin had tugged his mace from the hungry earth and now pivoted about to face me. He blew a snotty breath through his nostrils and prepped himself for another run at me.

"Should've stayed out of it, palebelly," the bony moblin heaved. "Ya' might've gotten out o' this alive if you'd have just gone on your way. Might've found yerself a nice place in the new order." He patted the mud-flecked head of his weapon against one open palm. "Now? Yer own ma won't recognize ya' when I'm through."

The moblin hopped forward – a feint that I didn't immediately respond to. When I tried to step to my right, he followed with a bow-legged jigging motion like some awful, homicide-minded marionette. The mace flicked out and skimmed inches from the tip of my nose.

I tried to bring the sword up across my body, dropping into the kind of defensive stance one sees in movies. The result felt so awkward and ungainly that I let loose the stance almost immediately. Even in breaths between assault and parry, I felt like I was participating in Baby's First Sword Lesson. Why the hell hadn't Sir Kael taken the time to teach me some swordcraft?

Well, I answered myself, I suspect that he didn't foresee this particular scenario. If you had absorbed all those horsemanship lessons as intended, you wouldn't have gotten your sorry ass knocked off. Et cetera and so forth.

I growled, threw the sword down to my side, and attempted the same kind of thrust that had felled the second moblin. This time, I put every ounce of strength I could manage into it.

What a cumbersome, bumbling attack. The tall moblin dodged it easily as shouldering his way through a crowd. He crowed with delight and stepped into the gap.

The moblin swept the mace down like a pendulum. Though his aim was off, accuracy was not entirely needed: When the head of the weapon glanced off my right kneecap, the pain was instantaneous and almost overwhelming.

"Ow," I said flatly and swung my sword in a blind counter-arc. The moblin nimbly leapt back, easily dodging the amateurish attack. He hopped back three paces, hooting laughter.

Slow fire radiated up and down my leg. I gritted my teeth and felt tears wet the corners of my eyes. Additional weight didn't cause the knee to give out, but it did pulse agonizingly. I tried to shift the stress to my left leg and realized just how obvious the adjustment was. The mob with the mace drank in my discomfort with an elemental sort of joy.

He said, "You're blowin', king-humper. Gettin' tired." He stalked back and forth, swinging his mace in lazy half-arcs. "Figures that it'd be some bloody child playin' at soldiers that'd kill me mates. With armor like that, ya' must be some nob's son. That it, sonny? Thought ya'd go kill some snouts tonight? Prove to yer pa that you ain't such a sissy-ninny after all?"

I wheezed, "Fuck you."

The tall moblin shrugged and flashed me a pilsner-colored smile. "Aye, aye. To business, then."

He strode forth to finish me off.

"MOTHER–"

A thin, girlish voice howled from the sky. With it came a blazing comet of blue light.

"–FUCKER!"

A lightning-blue streak snapped across the moblin's face. Its impact was like the blow of a cricket bat. I watched the brown-skinned moblin's entire face distend downward, jaw snapping open and to the side with a gristly cracking noise. A vile spray of blood and spittle ejected from his shattered mouth as he tilted backward. The moblin sailed clean off his feet and landed on the edge of the clearing in a battered heap.

Befuddlement overwhelmed my body. My right arm – and the Master Sword it carried – fell limply to my side. As I watched, an electric blue spark rose from the loam and hovered, twitching, about a yard away.

"Finish it!" an enraged voice shouted.

I simply stared, literally dumbstruck.

The fairy shot out and bobbed emphatically over the twitching wreck of the tall moblin. I could see that he was blinking rapidly now and flexing his gaunt fingers. The mace lay at his side like a reminder of dark times long gone by.

"Fucking _kill him_, you idiot!" the fairy yelled. Its aura grew as bright and painful to look at as an arc lamp. "Go!"

Some primal part within me – a seed that Hyrule had been slowly coaxing into vibrancy – pulled taut. It felt like every muscle in my body flexed at once. I took off across the intervening yards as if I were once again shooting off a starting block. I dropped into a slide like I was coming in for home plate, further coating my trousers in a layer of mud and grass.

And there he was, shaking and gurgling through his badly broken jaw. I knelt above him as if I were there to offer absolution. The tall moblin's dazed eyes slid to mine without recognition. His entire form was bathed in coruscating waves of pale blue. He reached a pathetic, wobbly hand out to touch me.

I pulled the Master Sword up like a sacrificial dagger and plunged it straight through his neck. His blood jetted up and splattered hotly on my cheek. It reeked of salt and iron. Those small dark eyes leaked and quickly lost their focus. The grasping hand sank into the grass.

With a rank gasp, I stood up on clay made runny with fresh blood. I hobbled out into the clearing and lowered myself arthritically to the stone at its center. As it turned out, it was not particularly suitable for sitting. When I tried to breathe through my nostrils, the marshy space smelled like a slaughterhouse. I raised an absent palm to wipe away the moblin's warmish blood and only succeeded in smearing it over half of my face.

Three dead moblins lay scattered about the glade. Three more people whose deaths I was responsible for.

Well: The black moblin wasn't dead yet, but he lay unconscious and his breath whistled redly through the hole in his chest.

Also, fuck him anyway. Fuck all of them.

"Hey!"

I looked up. I no doubt looked like a particularly grim chapter from a butcher's manual. Hovering about five feet away was the fairy that had started all of this. Her corona of twinkling blue had subsided somewhat. I could just make out her spindly body and gossamer dragonfly wings. Her eyes were less evident than they had been when she was in the grip of the tall moblin, but they were still somewhat visible. I could have sworn that they shimmered a gemstone green.

"Holy _shit _was it good timing for you to come along like that!" the fairy chirped.

"Yeah," I panted. My kneecap hurt so badly that I wondered if it was broken. "It was the least I could do."

"Pfft," she laughed. "No, you saved my ass, man. I'm a scout with the Second Legion. I have word about the enemy's northern flanks and need to get back to command. Sorry if I don't hang around."

"No worries. I'm just looking for the rest of my . . ." Unit? Squad? Platoon? "My, um, guys."

She asked, "Why are you all the way out here?"

I shrugged, licked my lips, and immediately regretted it – they were spackled with soupy blood. Between ignoble spitting sounds, I said, "I was – ptew – out with the Third's cavalry. We tried to cut off some enemy – phew – riders in the northern gorge. I got separated."

"That sucks, man," the fairy said. Her commiseration was no doubt genuine, but she was obviously in a rush. "I think that if you keep heading southeast, you'll hit Hyrule's lines. I'm sorry, but I can't do anything for you right now – but I'll be sure to tell 'em that you're out here."

"Don't suppose you can do anything about this?" I pointed to my swollen knee.

"Naw, man. Sorry. I'm not a medic." She floated up, looked every which way about the clearing, and began to buzz southward.

"Well then," I sighed, "I guess that a word on my behalf will have to do. Good luck!"

"Thanks again, man!" she called back. The tiny blue globe of light flew in a parabola over the cattails.

I anxiously rubbed my knee. I stood and hissed at the fresh, skittering pain emanating from it. With shaking hands, I dropped the Master Sword back into its scabbard. No point in trying to clean it. Not with the evening still so young.

"Hey! Listen!"

I turned. The fairy hovered just above the tips of the marsh grass, looking down at me. Her glow had diminished so much that – but for the barest heat-ripple and flash of wings – she almost blended into the rich navy of the darkening sky.

"You're the Hero, right?" she asked.

I nodded, but it was a gesture empty of meaning. "I guess," I said. "How'd you know?"

The aura about the tiny floating body brightened for a moment, then all but vanished. "I owe you, Hero," the fairy whispered. Its voice was so small and so distant that I barely heard the next words. "One day, I'll repay you. I swear it."

And then she was off, zooming down into the endless fields of swaying grass. A brief flash of blue pulsed in the shadows, and then was gone.


	41. 41

**41**

I made my way southward, toward the vicious bowels of the battle. Once I found an open spot among the marsh grass, it was easy enough to navigate: The whole southern horizon glowed a hot, flickering orange. Gigantic black plumes coiled across the sky.

There was little to do but walk exhaustedly along spits of semi-solid land and sandbars. I crept through the fields of cane and slipped in and out of the thinning glades. The river and its progeny of creeks became clearer and more defined. Within fifteen minutes of travel, I had largely left the swamplands behind.

Before I had set out, I made sure to fish a bottle of the Red from my belt. I steeled myself, grimaced, and downed the oily tincture. To my surprise, there was little trouble. My stomach flipped over, but there was no urgent surge of nausea this time. Perhaps I was finally getting used to it. The potion seemed to kick in quickly, noticeably reducing the swelling in my knee. I quailed to imagine making the journey south without its help.

When I reached the first creek bed that flowed dark and crystalline, I sat down at its edge and dangled my feet into its surface. Quick, cold water washed over my boots and infiltrated their flaws. By this point, my stockings were so saturated that it was a blessing simply to feel them cool off for a bit. Somewhere to the south, massed troops were still howling and fighting as I dipped my hands to the creek and took long, blessed sips of its grass-tinged bounty. The possibility of giardia never even occurred to me. All I knew was that every part of me felt wet but my throat. Why the Hylians hadn't seen to issue me a canteen or water bag was beyond me.

One last thing struck me. With cupped hands, I washed flaking moblin blood from my face. A cleansing that felt almost ceremonial. In its benediction I felt the lingering stress and pain of that last battle drift from my mind. It was a quiet but profound moment of self-baptism. When I stood from the creek and pressed on, it was with a newly sharpened focus.

Onward. There were ever-stranger sights. A picturesque descent through overlapping pits of perdition.

I came upon the broken cadaver of what appeared to be a bokoblin, but was as tall a basketball player. In one gnarled claw it still clutched a weapon that looked like a guillotine blade detached from its apparatus and sunk into the top of a stripped tree branch. I found myself gladdened by the creature's mysterious death.

In an otherwise beautiful meadow surrounded by rilling creeks, there lay the dismembered parts of dozens of combatants. Halves of moblin heads. Dripping goron shells. Unidentifiable viscera. All strewn about haphazardly as if in grotesque celebration. Not a single body had been left intact. The charnel place smelled so strongly of rot and excrement that I lingered no more than a couple minutes.

A short column of Protectorate boar riders galloped past me, headed southwest. Though I dropped prone and made an effort to fold under a nearby bush, caution was probably unnecessary. The dozen-or-so boarmen rode with such pained determination that they probably wouldn't have noticed a whole cohort standing and watching them go by.

On the hillsides, fires consumed grass and trees in just about every color of the rainbow. Alchemic flames licked with emerald tongues and snapped at the sky like transubstantiated sapphire. Among the rocks of the western slope, there blazed an inferno that glowed by turns blinding phosphorous white, sickly sulfur yellow, and rippling obsidian black.

The last of the daylight was chased from the sky. For a time, I hiked in near-darkness. The first stars that attempted to shine were smothered by smoke and firelight. The expedition south proceeded beneath a greasy, witch-lit pall.

I came to a place where three brooks split apart from a wide, tea-colored channel. That channel marked the way south, on toward the main swath of the Kerneghi River. The brownish creek spun with effluvia and was hemmed in on both sides by towering, impenetrable-looking stands of cane.

With a shudder of distaste, I tested the creek's tepid depths. It rose murkily to just below my knees. I considered hoofing it through the cane fields, but found the option more roundabout and dangerous than simply wading against the channel's brown current.

Sighing, I jumped in and sloshed through the sluggish waters. Broken sticks, clumps of grass and leaves, and unidentifiable flotsam swirled past as I worked my way south. My legs had to work more against the soft, slippery creek bottom than the halfhearted current. At one point, I thought I saw a pair of human fingers spin down the creek edge, but it was dark enough that this was probably an illusion.

Taking the creek channel turned out to be the right choice. Within ten minutes, I had left the cane fields and came in sight of the Kerneghi's big, meandering main channel. It was here that I discovered just how thoroughly the trough of Kerneghi Gorge had been transformed into a recreation of Hell.

Almost every inch of the western hillside was aflame, and a good portion of the eastern slope had been kindled too. The twisted husks of burnt corpses littered the valley floor. Mangled claws grasped through the smoky light in supplication. Some way down the valley, I could just make out the titanic remains of the one of the Protectorate armogohma. Its legs and abdomen were barely visible through the roaring conflagration that was slowly consuming it. Though I heard the distorted sounds of massed combat, I saw nothing move but fire and water. Thick walls of smoke and night-darkness stood between me and the main fighting.

I tried to stick to the eastern shoreline of the river, but the necessities of hazardous geography and smoldering wreckage drove me back into the water's thin, cold embrace. Twice more I had to duck into the lee of sagging aspen groves as boar riders rushed up the gorge.

Where are Hyrule's troops? I wondered. Are those the same boars that we tried to cut off in the marshes? What's become of Sir Walther Kael and his cavalry?

It grew worse.

I knew that I had entered a place where fierce fighting had occurred only a short time before. Shock-eyed Hylian legionaries – skirmishers, I'd guess – lay sprawled on the eastern bank and about a grassy little island that divided the river. Their shields and breastplates glistened red and orange. I took little comfort in the fact almost as many bokoblins were scattered among them, their cave-fish eyes blank and bloodless.

One Hylian moaned as I moved past him. I turned to assist – feeling a brief surge of hope at the seven remaining vials of healing elixir – and found a man with one arm, no legs, and only half a jawbone. The ends of his severed limbs were charred and ragged. A swollen slug of a tongue protruded from his ruined face. His eyes were glazed with an agony beyond comprehension.

I fled from this ghoulish apparition feeling all the more a coward. I can only hope that he died soon after

Deeper into the zone of battle I trudged. The oily stink of napalm washed around me. It was a thick, gooey, implacable foulness that clung stubbornly to the skin and hair. The odor seemed to have its own texture and viscosity.

Rancid slicks of the stuff flowed over the surface of the river like burning islands. Whole archipelagos of blazing jelly moved with the languid current. In the middle distance, groves of what might have been cottonwoods had been transformed into towering, sludge-covered pyres.

From the sounds of crashing metal and harried battle calls, I expected to walk straight into the battle lines at any moment. My earlier assessment of the gorge's strange acoustics felt prophetic – the rank cacophony of the fighting echoed from everywhere and seemed to be centralized nowhere. Bare rocks boomed with distant bomb blasts. Trampled bushes echoed with the last screams of the dying. Drums beat along the surface of the roiling river water.

I coughed and gagged and squinted, eyes watering openly. The miasma had become so thick that I wondered if I was even going in the right direction. At this point, I was treading the crushed grass and churned-up sandbars on what I _thought _was the eastern bank of the Kerneghi. This fucking smoke swirled like fog, though. What if I had gotten turned around somehow? Surely I should have run into someone by now. Surely if I followed the river . . .

"RRRAAAAAAAUUUUUGH!"

A reedy, screeching figure came clanking out of a bank of smoke. Thrust before it was the silvery, quivering head of a pike. The weapon was aimed roughly at my belly.

I didn't have time to draw my sword. All I could do was dodge. I pivoted right and leapt back, my knee complaining sullenly with the effort. My boots slid through the matted grass and carried me to a stop in a pile of wet gravel sloping into the river.

The extravagant move probably hadn't been necessary – it caused my attacker to miss by yards rather than feet. He checked his charge only with considerable effort, momentum carrying him much farther into the riverside field than he had intended. Bellowing breathlessly, he wheeled about to face me. When I saw his human eyes and pointed ears, I almost let out a cackle of relief.

He was a rat-faced teenager, pointy of nose and pimpled of brow. His dirt-colored hair was in severe disarray. When he adjusted his stance, the heavy greaves and bracers he wore clattered with ill-fitting unease. He wore a shirt of red boiled leather under loose ringmail. The outfit told me that he must belong to one of Hyrule's pike cohorts.

"Stay back!" he suddenly shouted. "I ain't afraid to stick ya' in the guts!"

"Hey," I said. I couldn't help but smile.

"Who are ya' then? One o' Drex's lads? Some skin-changin' wizard? Or are ya' just another bastard o' the Damned? Tell me or I," the young man shook like a terrified lamb, "I-I'll poke ya'! Honest to Din I will!"

I looked down at my breastplate. Filthy as it was, the golden thunderbird of House Harkinian was still readily in evidence. "Um," I managed.

"Oy, legionary! What's all this, then?"

The voice issued from behind the pikeman, farther up the riverbank. With it came the creaking and clacking of near a dozen armored boots. A moment later, two more Hylian pikemen rounded the shattered remains of what had once been a formidable oak tree. The two became five, then eight, then ten men. They spread out in a rough crescent over the sloping riverbank, long weapons tilted at the ready. Most had doffed their signature half-helms. Their faces were soot-streaked and constricted with fear. Every pair of eyes held some new form of skeptical curiosity as they beheld me.

I can barely imagine what I looked like, then: A bruised, mud-slathered, blood-speckled, shambling mess – stinking of bog water and rank crotch sweat. What armor I wore was dinged and dirt-smeared. I carried no shield and the only weapon I bore was sheathed at my hip. For all they knew, I was a deserter currently hauling ass away from my embattled cohort.

From the center of the group of legionaries stepped a man surrounded by the weary pall of leadership. He was one of the few who still wore a helm, which he now pulled off. Beneath it was a gangly, gray haired man with a cleft chin and a perpetual grimace. Unlike the others, he did not hold his pike as if readying to run me through with it.

This man rolled his helm under one arm and tapped the rodent-faced young man with his pike. It was just a slight brush along the shoulder, but it made the younger fellow half jump out of his skin.

"He's one of ours, Torvald. Back down," the older man said.

"H-how d-do ya' know?" the youth stammered. "There're plenty o' humans workin' for Ganon. He c-c-could be a spy!"

"Legionary Torvald. . ." the older man sighed, ". . . we stand in the midst of an open godsdamned battle. Why would the snouts send a spy to a raggedy-ass bunch like us?"

"You never know, sir!" squeaked Legionary Torvald. His eyes were big as handballs and he refused to stop pointing his pike in my direction.

"Maybe this will help," I said. I extended my hands and slowly, carefully pulled off the chainmail hood. My fingers brushed reflexively over the broom-bristle extremity of my hair. It felt strange, not having to brush its unsecured strands back from my ears.

I enjoyed a few seconds of breathless silence. Well, not _silence_ – the battle for Kerneghi Gorge still raged some way upriver. Its catastrophic noise was continuous.

The older man exclaimed, "Bloody hell!"

Ten more men now leaned in toward me. They muttered and goggled as if I were some just-unveiled carnival freak.

"The Hero!"

"So he _is _an outerlander . . ."

"Look at 'em!"

"Nayru's tits, look at that there sword. He's got the sword!"

I sighed, "Yeah, that's me. Hurray."

The graying man – the one with the corona of authority – strode around the jumpy young pikeman (Torvald, apparently) and grasped my arm robustly.

"Sergeant-at-Arms Donnelly Davs of the 18th Pikes, sir. Pleased to meet and an honor, sir. Beg pardon, sir, but we're gonna need to get you to safety. Or you'll be one heroic dead bastard. Sir."

"What?" I croaked.

He tugged my arm a bit and gestured back toward the direction the squad had come from. "Orders are to fetch you back to command, sir. We ain't attached to our cohort now, so we need to get back in formation soon anyway. Thusly I am takin' you under my squad's protection."

"Where's command?" I asked.

"Don't rightly know, sir." Davs spread a grim little smile. "We're pretty sure they've rode south along the ridgeline. Out to where it's the worst."

I blinked, eyelids itching with smoke and airborne dust. "Oh."

Though his gloved hand slid from my elbow, Sergeant Donnelly Davs motioned insistently for me to follow. The other pikemen of the 18th were already taking places about the grassy bank.

"All right, lads!" Davs barked. "We all know who this here fellow is, so it's a damned good thing we ain't got time for introductions! You can wait until the fightin's done to ask for his autograph. Right now, all us men o' the 18th that remain need to protect this man with our lives."

"Long live the Link!" one legionary shouted.

Came the reply: "Goddesses praised!"

"Then we all know our duty, then," Davs nodded. He dropped the sweat-streaked half-helm back over his head. With an encouraging nod, the Sergeant-at-Arms said, "Steady on, sir. Time to head out."

The eleven pikemen flexed up their weapons, checked their armor, and dropped into loose formation about me. As we started south along the grass and ground-up mud of the riverbank, their perimeter about me tightened. Into the smoke-dim reaches of the valley we marched.

Soon after we were under way, slowly hiking through the broken belly of the gorge, I decided that some intelligence was in order. "What's going on?" I asked. "Who's winning?"

Davs shook his head mordantly. "Only the goddesses know that, sir."

Hmph. "I could have sworn I saw this portion of the valley in the opening fight," I said.

"Aye," one of the other legionaries responded. All I saw of his face was his broad, bricklike chin. "The whole battle seems to be movin' toward the mouth o' the gorge. Down to the canyon rapids, even."

Davs cut in, "At least, most o' the big cohort-on-cohort fightin's moved that way. Sir. There's fightin' goin' on on a smaller scale all over this valley." He turned and hissed, "So you lads keep your eyes on the lookout for _anything_, understand?"

We had to splash through the river to avoid the blackened remains of another oak tree, fused with an oxcart full of charred and melted bottles.

A lone black horse, sans rider, wandered confusedly over the eastern slope.

Downriver, a series of explosions joined into a vibrant crescendo. Bright white light shuddered from the south and over the napalm-laden fields.

"I have to know," Davs suddenly said. His lined face was barely visible beneath the cap of his helmet. "Is it true that you come from a land of _barbarians_, sir? A kind of lawless wasteland?"

Even amid all this monstrousness, I managed a laugh. "I guess you could call it that," I chuckled.

"Cor!" Legionary Torvald muttered.

In order to avoid any further awkward questions about the cannibal dystopia of Los Angeles, I asked, "How about you guys? Are you all from one place, or do they mix you up?"

"A bit o' both," one compact, angry-looking pikeman said.

"Pebble has the right of it, sir. Once you join the Royal Legions, you're loyal to the legion first. We're all Second Legion lads, through and through," Davs grinned. "That said, we're all fightin' for someplace we want to protect. Most of us're from Lanayru, but young Torvald there is from the Basin Flats. Grew up rice farmin'. Me? I was born and raised a boy of Twill. So you know I take this fight a bit personally, sir."

"Of course," I said – in near-total ignorance.

The legionary Davs had identified as "Pebble" grumbled, "If we don't stop 'em tonight, there'll be no end to it. These snout scum'll crack the line, next. An' then where will we be?"

"Legionary . . ." Donnelly Davs growled.

Pebble shrugged. "I'm just sayin' what everybody's thinkin'. We win or we die, Sergeant."

Davs barked, "Told you to stow it, Legionary Lebrant!"

"Aye, Sergeant-at-Arms." Pebble seemed to draw lower, as if in an attempt to hide.

When one of the titan banks of smoke opened for an instant, I saw that the moon was just starting to struggle from the east. Then the roiling cloud closed and we were once more struggling beneath an ink-black sky. The omnipresent fires provided all the light we needed.

Though it wasn't a hard march, the pace the pikemen set had started my calves aching. The clatter of our boots and bracers was loud enough that it should have announced our presence to anyone in the vicinity. Nonetheless, we met few people on our way up the Kerneghi shore.

Some wounded men hailed us from the hillside, calling for water. Despite the nervous remonstrations of Legionary Torvald, Sergeant Davs pushed us beyond their voices' reach. I thought of the mortally wounded man I had run past. Despite the oven-like atmosphere, I shivered.

A troop of archers loped past us, curving up the eastern slope. Beneath their gray hauberks, their arms were thick as anacondas. Each of the quivers they lugged must have weighed fifty pounds. When Donnelly Davs attempted to stop one of them to ask for directions, the man barked, "Fuck off!" and went on his way.

Twice I saw small bands of Hylian grenadiers struggling at an angle across the flow of the Kerneghi River. Though the current here was slow and the depth almost nonexistent, both times the purple-collared legionaries seemed to be having a rough time of it.

What a clusterfuck, I thought.

We came to a point where the Kerneghi River straightened, flattened, and went so wide it almost touched the sides of the valley. To our right, across a short expanse of river, was a wooded island protruding from the Kerneghi's flow. The tops of its trees sparked and smoldered.

_A-LOO-LOO-LOO-LOOOOOO_.

A bizarre piping erupted from the stands of cottonwood perched on the island. Soon after, there came a rustling of branches and charred leaves.

"Ah, no," Donnelly Davs moaned. "Not now."

The Sergeant-at-Arms held his pike horizontally up over his head. Davs crowed, "_Moonies incoming_!"

The entire squad instantly snapped right and fanned out into a loose semicircle, facing the riverbank. They planted their heavy boots and leaned into the support of their ankle bracers. Fireglow and smokeshine bejeweled their pike points.

I myself clumsily grabbed at the Master Sword. After an embarrassing few moments of feckless fumbling, I managed to pull the blade out and grip both hands around its pommel. Having no idea what stance I should take, I just imitated the forward-leaning defensive position shared by all the pikemen.

"Sir, it may be wise for you to let us take care of this for you," Davs chuffed. "There's no tellin' what these Moon Guild bastards will throw at us."

The hell with _that_. I had just proven that I could hold my own in a close-in fight. And I was done with people trying to fight for me.

_A-LOO-LOO-LAAAAA._

Trees shivered and twigs broke across the edge of the island. Shapes appeared between the trunks and crept through the undergrass. All twelve of us tensed like springs.

What emerged from that little river wood was not what I expected.

What _had _I expected? Maybe some robe-clad, masked Hylians charging across the river at us. Perhaps a few bombs; a spell or two. Hell, I had no idea.

Instead, a short line of eight Protectorate soldiers stepped out onto the edge of their island. They blinked at us with both moblin and bokoblin eyes. All but one of them wore no armor whatsoever, and the last only bore a boiled leather hauberk about three sizes too big for him. The rest were clad only in loincloths. One bokoblin leaned against an iron maul like a lamppost, at least a foot taller than him. The rest bore weapons so ratty and jagged they may have been scavenged from a scrap heap. Almost every one of these strange soldiers was marked with curling ceremonial scars.

The twelve of us – lightly armored but still not nearly _naked_ – stared down the eight Protectorate men. Five bokoblins and three moblins. I felt my breath quicken. My chainmail hood was going to rust from all the sweat.

"In the name of Ganon!" one of the moblins cried. "We who are about to die trust his almighty will!"

Every one of the soldiers repeated some variation of this – at least presumably, because the oaths came in what sounded like four different languages. Then they all unclasped a fist or swept a hand into the belt holding up their loin cloths. There came the sound of glass shattering.

Donnelly Davs' eyes almost popped out of his helm. "Ah shite shite shite _kill them_!" he screamed.

The 18th Pikes of the Second Legion (cohort unknown) took off into the river at a run. I may have reinforced them a bit.

Out on the island, the eight Ganon fanatics brought fingers and palms to their mouths. Multivariate oozing liquids drooled over their tongues and down their gullets.

Every one of the Protectorate men burst into warbling screams and yowls. They clutched at their chests and flailed limbs in helpless pain.

Our boots drove over the river bottom. A frigid, soaking sprint toward the creatures now convulsing at the edge of the woodland. The 18th's pikes needed to reach them soon.

Too late.

The noises that erupted from that river island chilled me to the core. Guttural groans; almost elastic stretching; grotesque ripping. A growling, snapping, sucking sound. Whimpers of pain becoming howls and roaring bays of unfettered hatred.

Against every natural law I could think of, the eight Protectorate soldiers _gained mass_. Their muscles bloated and their spines stretched. Teeth grew into wretched fangs. Scraggly black talons erupted from one bokoblin's fingers. One moblin's belly distended until it became a bulbous, yellowish sack. A bokoblin gained height like some toxic weed, his voice grown high and shrieking.

Suddenly, the origin of the Manute Bol-sized bokoblin I had come across wasn't such a mystery. This specimen, I now noticed, had once been the shrimpy guy with the absurdly oversized maul. Now it fit him just fine.

One of the moblins just _died_, right there. There was no great show of it. Green foam issued from his jowls and he collapsed into the river, stiff as a poisoned rat.

It all happened very fast. From convulsions to sudden, cancerous super-growth there passed perhaps thirty seconds. We didn't reach the creatures until they were already uncurling from their agonizing metamorphoses, hands already on their weapons.

A wave of hot, maggoty stench struck us. The wet smells of pus, boiled blood, and poison fungus.

"BERSERKERS!" Davs snarled. "Form the line. Form fuckin' line!"

Davs tried to move his boys back, throwing me a glance that told me that I needed to do exactly the same. "Stay behind me, sir," he heaved.

We watched as the first of the berserkers departed the island and leapt almost ten feet out to meet us. This springy bastard was the stretched bokoblin, now tall as I was and covered with black, festering pustules. In his grotesque hands, the monument-sized iron maul looked almost _ordinary_.

The bokoblin berserker let out a primal, distorted yawp. It rushed us so quickly that I didn't even bother to fall back into a defensive stance. The maul swung with a great _thwoosh _and snapped one of the pikemen off his feet. The legionary made no sound as he flew back a dozen feet, skipping over the surface of the water before falling into a broken tangle.

The rest of the berserkers came loping after us, mewling and snapping like a pack of demons unchained at long last.

Well, I had just enough time to think, it _was _getting a little boring.


	42. 42

**42**

Ganon's berserkers – those terrible products of the Moon Guild's alchemy – approached like the roaring remains of an absinthe dream.

They drove us before them, out into the river – but it was far from an unfair fight. Their size and strength were indeed overawing. Yet, the 18th Pikes and I outnumbered those shambling monsters by five. Though we backpedaled in a storm of spray, it was presumably to find a better spot to fight. The now-huge creatures pursued us with painful mewls on their lips.

The 18th Pikes formed up. They took great pains to corral me behind them. From over their shoulders I watched as seven ravening, alchemically-reshaped monsters came at a charge. They carried crude axes and pitted cleavers. In their eyes swam madness and suffering unimaginable.

Not a single one looked remotely similar. There was the bokoblin who had grown tall, but there was also one that had simply sprouted into a misshapen, roiling mass of muscle. Only one of his arms had grown; the other hung limply at his side like a vestigial organ. Yet another bore skin like maggot-flesh and talons like black iron sickles. The moblin whose belly had become a septic grotesquerie leered wretchedly from below protruding shoulder blades. He held a pair of dull-looking cleavers in hands like octopuses. Much of his skin had turned a mottled yellow-green.

The second berserker to reach us was a former moblin grown into a ragdoll goliath. His arms were illogical ropes knotted with bulging muscle. One of his eyes protruded from his misshapen skull. Its whites were so filled with blood that it looked like some maleficent alien berry, ripe and awful. He carried no weapon, instead lunging and flailing with irongrip hands the size of serving platters.

He slammed into the line of outstretched pikes with a hideous gargle. Pike points skittered off his skin with porcelain chinking sounds. Distorted as his body was, it was also somehow _armored. _Stone skin; petrified flesh. The 18th's line scattered backward, sending the battle into a free-for-all.

I fell back as well, sloshing against the current. My boots slipped along the rocks of the river bottom. Ahead of me, the bulge-eyed berserker stumbled between legionaries and dropped into a weird, crouching lope. The once-moblin monstrosity barreled straight for me. It brought with it a pall of heat like a furnace and a scent like something gone wrong in the refrigerator.

Before it was even five feet from me, I had my sword up and ready. The berserker snarled and reared like a deformed bear, raking the air with its hands. I realized that this had been the moblin who had declared the soldiers' intent to die.

I held my ground shakily. The current pushed insistently against the backs of boots.

In the corner of my eye, I saw legionaries Torvald, Pebble, and an unnamed man try to box in the lanky bokoblin with the massive maul. The berserker spun the great black club above its head and let a long, pale orange tongue loll from its mouth. Dead gray eyes sparkled in its gargoyle's skull. The maul whipped out and . . .

. . . My own personal berserker was bearing down on me like a falling boulder. Bloody slather streamed from its jaws as it descended.

Fuck!

Without thought or plan, I lunged forward and drove the Master Sword at the thing's chest. Every effort expended. The blade's tip met the berserker's ribcage at great combined speed. There was a sound like nails on a chalkboard. The shock rattled every bone in my arms and spun me back like a top. A dozen horizons melted together.

My breath ripped in and out of me. When I came to a stop, it was on one knee. The other lay submerged and slowly going numb. I could hear the armored moblin berserker panting and squealing, still very much alive. The stench of its exhalations was like a garbage fire.

I caught a glimpse of Sergeant-at-Arms Donnelly Davs expertly lunging and parrying with his pike as the bloated, greenish moblin advanced upon him. When the pestilential berserker made a stunted attack, Davs ran the fiend through. Its abdomen burst like a gas-bloated corpse. An excruciating reek of ammonia and rotten meat joined the stomach-churning soup of odors already mixing above the river.

At my back, heavy paws troubled the water. The ragdoll berserker, on its way to crush my skull with its hands.

I whirled about, blindly slicing behind me with my sword. I watched the big, ropey creature stumble back out of the blade's path. It chuffed and snarled in frustration.

Sometime between blinks, a number of regular Protectorate soldiers had joined the fray. In the dark and chaos, I wasn't able to count them. They advanced across the river from the west, armored and moving cautiously. For the moment, they were a distant concern at best.

Further out on the river, a pikeman's voice rose in a scream. Unfamiliar war cries echoed through the gorge.

Once more, I faced down Captain Bulgin'-Eye. He crouched on all fours like a dog at the hunt. His alchemic muscles twitched with febrile purpose. Beyond him, the pikemen struggled against berserkers and Protectorate footmen. I had to get past this guy and into the real fight. His red eyeball pulsed lasciviously as he suddenly skittered toward me.

I matched his charge – but instead of taking him head-on, I threw myself left at the last moment. When you're up to your ankles in water, this is much easier said than done. I found myself dashing just past the berserker even as he tried to correct his headlong rush. I aimed myself for the main body of Hylian troops.

Then he caught me.

A huge, gangly paw grabbed at my head just as I was ducking and weaving away from it. Its feverish fingers snatched the chainmail hood and – with a wrench of my spine – pulled it clean off. Neck aching, I wiggled down and dropped into a run toward the legionaries of the 18th. A narrow escape indeed.

Ahead of me, the stretched bokoblin dropped with a pike embedded in its throat.

Behind me, the bulge-eyed berserker jangled my headgear and cackled with petty triumph.

Donnelly Davs must have seen me coming, because he was at my side within moments. He said nothing, instead twisting his lips into a sneer and bounding forward to meet the armored monster at my heels.

I wanted to call out and warn him: That thing's skin is hard as a fucking rock!

The Sergeant-at-Arms was too quick for me. He planted his feet, dropped his shoulder, and threw all his weight forward. His pike shot out quicker than I could follow. It skewered the moblin berserker's blood-brimming eyeball with a gooey pop. When the once-moblin stepped forward in surprise, the pike drove deep into its head. It must surely have pierced the thing's brain, for when Davs pulled the weapon back, the berserker fell into a pile like a poorly made toy.

Side-by-side with Davs, I set back into the skirmish. Four berserkers lay dead in the wash of the Kerneghi. Three armored moblins had been killed or badly wounded. A cursory count put six more infantrymen in the group that had decided to join the battle after it had started.

I wasn't actually able to get back into it with the berserkers. Legionary Torvald managed to slash the bokoblin with skin grown the color of a bottom-feeding carp across the face. It tilted back, screaming horribly. The blood that leaked out of it glowed a black-light purple. Why it died from such a superficial wound, I'll never know.

The last of the berserkers fell. It was the bokoblin whose left arm had grown into a battering ram while its right had withered into skin-draped kindling. Two of the nameless pikemen jammed wood and steel through its chest and pinned it to the riverbed, crying like a piglet.

That just left the conventional troops who had wandered into the situation like latecomers to a bar fight. None looked particularly pleased to be here – ankle-deep in swirling water and facing off against a troop of angry pikemen. To a man they were dressed in heavy plate and wielded weapons that looked fresh out of their forge. The dome-shaped helms atop their heads looked thick enough to deflect bullets. They made no move to engage us, instead bobbling with naked indecision.

With Donnelly Davs at one elbow and an unknown legionary bleeding from his ear at the other, we marched across the river to meet the bastards. When I first bounded forward, it took me some moments to fully realize that I now led the charge. At my back, the 18th Pikes of the Second Legion howled:

"FOR HYRULE! FOR THE HERO!"

The first Protectorate soldier to meet me had enough time to tentatively raise his halberd before I cut it in half with a single stroke. Most of his fingers went with it. I didn't even feel the bite of bone. On the upswing, the space between his breast and shoulder-plates spouted a wellspring of red. At my sides, legionaries cried out as they crashed upon the five remaining moblins.

"Haha," I laughed. "Hahaha!"

Holy shit.

I was _enjoying _this.

We brought the sword and the pike to them. Our weapons and armor glowed with the oily light of napalm fires. My limbs buzzed with a previously unknown intensity. They seemed to rejoice in the motion of battle. All pain and fear forgotten.

These moblins were not experienced fighters. Despite their well-forged armor and new blades, their movements betrayed recruits even greener than I was. There was no verve in their defense; no blind patriotism in their attacks. For a moment, I was forced to consider that these might be conscripts. These wide-eyed moblin men might have no love for Ganon in their alien hearts.

Bullshit, the Other Me whispered. Kill them all.

I paired off with a fat, jabbering moblin as his comrades tried to retreat from the tide of pikemen. He slashed at me with a broadsword unsullied by blood or wear. About us, the night roared like the sweltering, smoke-choked confines of some world-spanning furnace.

My boots sliced through the water like it wasn't even there. Using both hands, I met each swing of his blade with my own. Their silvery edges blurred through the air like half-seen birds. I thrust and parried and laughed as the moblin made consternated noises beneath the weight of his helm.

Is this really happening? I wondered. Can this truly be me?

In actuality, the duel between the Protectorate soldier and I lasted no more than thirty seconds. About us, Hyrule's pikemen had made short work of the straggling moblins. When he saw the last of his allies fall, the moblin trading sword-strikes with me tried to turn and run. Caught in some tricky portion of the river bottom, his legs twisted and betrayed him. He fell with a keening squeal. Moments later, Davs and his pikes found him as he attempted to rise.

The Hylians were not merciful.

Afterward, I stood stunned and blowing amid the remnants of the 18th. The legionaries leaned against the shafts of their weapons. Sweat rolled from their faces in rivulets.

Bodies propped from the riverbed like tasteless sculptures. One of the dead berserkers – the distorted bokoblin that had fought so savagely with his giant maul – had begun to smoke and sizzle audibly. When the vapor wafted our way, it smelled like someone had piled decomposing pork on a barbecue.

"How many did we lose?" Davs breathed. He removed his helm to mop runny sweat from his forehead. At some point in the fight he had received a nick on his chin, which had already crusted over.

"Looks like three, sergeant," Legionary Torvald wheezed. "Toren, Mears, and Skinner."

I was actually somewhat uplifted by this. I had expected a much steeper butcher's bill.

Nonetheless, Davs spat and growled, "Those snout bastards. Goddesses weep for our fallen friends." He brushed a hand through his wet, gray-dusted hair. "Wounded?"

"We're all a bit battered, sergeant." Torvald managed a weak smile. "But it ain't nothin'. We can still move. An' there's still fight in us."

"Good." The Sergeant-at-Arms replaced his half-helm and looked to me. "What about you, sir?"

"I'm okay," I heaved. I shook my head. "Fine, I mean. I'm fine."

Better than fine, actually. The contours of my body were drenched. My clothes and armor were caked with mud and blood and substances probably best left unidentified. Despite all this, I felt so solid and alive that it bordered on invincibility. My knees and elbows were practically alight with adrenaline. Every smell was sharp and every sound crystalline. Even the overpowering foulnesses of napalm, entrails, and alchemically cooking flesh were welcome to me.

For all its horror, the world was suddenly _glorious_.

"Where to now, boss?" one legionary coughed.

Davs scratched at his chin. "Same way we were goin', lads."

There was grumbling among the ranks, but the pikemen began to fall in for continued march. After all, the battle for Kerneghi Gorge was obviously still in full swing. Still keyed up, I didn't bother sheathing my sword. I did a brief check of my kit and prepared for . . .

Wait.

I was sure that I had heard voices. Other voices. Oddly accented ones, not far from where we now stood.

"Hey," I said, raising one hand. "Listen."

I couldn't fucking believe that I had just said that.

The pikemen quieted. Sergeant Donnelly Davs scowled and cocked his head.

There: Off to our right. If I wasn't mistaken, that was the direction of the island that the berserkers had erupted from. Though the swirl of night and the incessant thrum of battle made judging distances a crapshoot, the sounds were probably twenty or thirty yards out.

They were definitely voices. Two of them, dropped in hissing, furtive argument. I began wading in their direction. Davs grumbled objections at my back.

Soon enough, I heard:

"I _told _you, Fredricksburg! Distillate of jade venom simply _will not work_. That's the third subject you lost today on that fool's errand!"

"What would you have of me, Ehrlheimer? I know the key ingredient is hiding there!"

The light of dozens of simmering fires shifted and there they were: two men stood idly in the midst of the Kerneghi River's lazy flow. Each gesticulated wildly with every word he spoke. The taller of the duo wore a pair of smoked spectacles, hiding even his eyes from me. The other was bald, pudgy, and sported oddly shaped tattoos across his temples. Both wore the silken masks of the Moon Guild.

"This is folly, Fredricksburg," the portly guildsman growled. "Absolute folly."

The man in spectacles chuffed, "Would you have me just abandon such a long line of research, Ehrlheimer?"

"Yes! One must abandon progress if it is _false _progress! Furthermore . . . ah, oh. Oh my. My dear Fredricksburg." The chubby guildsman shook his partner's shoulder. He looked at the pikemen and me with egg-shaped eyes. "We've been had, old boy."

"Cheese it, Ehrlheimer!" the bespectacled guildsman shouted. The two took off in the opposite direction, presumably toward the western shore.

"After those traitors, lads!" Sergeant Davs yelled happily.

Gladly we gave chase. The pikemen of the 18th hooted and jeered as we tromped after the two Moon Guildsmen. I joined them with a childlike sense of glee, splorching through the river as if dashing off for a game of tag.

Over the sound of splashing footsteps rose: "Damn you, Fredricksburg! This is all your fault!"

Was the shifting of the wind some kind of magic? Or did the gods just really, truly dislike me that day? Useless questions. All that I know is that the previously docile walls of smoke now folded back on us. Both the pikemen and I began coughing and rubbing at our besieged eyes.

All the same, we pushed forward. Despite the fact that they were three less than when we set out, the squad formed a defensive perimeter about me. We ran across one of the widest expanses of the river, trying to keep our wits about us in the writhing darkness.

I could hear the two guildsmen slooshing and slopping through the water ahead of us, but curtains of smoke kept them from our sight. We had to skirt around a wide swath of river slicked over with napalm, still burning fiercely. The surface of the water outright boiled at its edges. Could the Kerneghi really be this wide? I wondered. Why haven't we come to the opposite bank?

Soon enough, the Moon Guildsmen's wet footfalls faded until they were only ghosts of echoes. At the squad's fore, Donnelly Davs cast about in semi-darkness. His feet never stopped moving.

We came to a spot where the fumes swirled in gyrating spirals about a space like the eye of a hurricane. Here, a pointed boulder like a giant's incisor rose from the river. Dozens of smaller stones surrounded it as if in worship. A glistening black dollop of napalm burned amid the rocks.

"Spread out and form a cordon, lads. Give us a moment," Davs announced. He looked around exhaustedly. "Birdshite. Looks like we lost 'em," he finally muttered.

My heart was still roaring like an engine, but all my enthusiasm for the hunt had slowed considerably. All of a sudden, I wanted to sit and rest a spell. Maybe take a drink and cool my aching limbs.

"Sergeant?"

It was Legionary Torvald who spoke, his voice strained. The youth stood farthest from the center of the squad, out on its left flank.

"Sergeant Davs," he said wetly, "I think somethin's wrong."

When I turned to gaze at the zit-faced legionary, I felt as if every drop of liquid on me – and indeed, the river itself – had turned to ice.

Legionary Torvald's napalm-lit features were slack and sallow. There was a diagonal gap where his neck should have connected to his shoulder. A dark space running deep and canyon-like through flesh and boiled leather. Through it pumped a ruby-colored torrent.

The youth didn't say anything further. He didn't even open his mouth. He just stared at us with an expression of disbelief before folding at the knees. When he dropped – almost certainly dead before he hit the river – Torvald still clutched his pike in one hand.

Just paces behind the dead legionary, an ominous silhouette advanced against the hellglow.

"Aw, shite. Steady on, lads!" Donnelly Davs commanded. "Form on me!"

Through the veil of smoke emerged a massive, Mephistophelian figure.

This fell newcomer was enveloped from its unknown head to its theoretical toes in a suit of sleek, chrome-colored steel. It was armor that gave the simultaneous impressions of almost insurmountable bulkiness and effortless efficiency. Every plate slid together with little but a strange, resonant whispering.

It truly was a thing of magnificent, terrible beauty. Every inch of its platinum surface was subtly inlaid with crawling designs the color of a freshly slashed artery.

The figure's full helm was of a style that I associated with Greece – though more accurately, it was in the old Corinthian style. Tall; protecting down to the neckline; with sharply curved projections on either side of the vertical mouth-slit. Atop the helmet's crown ran a short silver crest like a steel mohawk. The helm was completely closed but for the blocky, Y-shaped mouth and eye slit that sliced across its facing. Beyond this opening, nothing was visible except darkness as absolute as the grave. A faceless terror.

Attached to the suit's shoulder-plates was a cape of sinuous scarlet. Its unidentifiable material flowed like liquid as the dread knight advanced.

In its left gauntlet, it held a tower shield as tall as an adolescent and whose surface was covered with rippling designs of pale brass and burgundy. In its right was clutched a double-bladed battle axe so big that I wondered if I would even be able to lift it with both hands. The weapon's edges were so keen they seemed to slice through light itself. They were slick with reddish spray.

The warrior that had so silently murdered Torvald ceased its march. River water welled up about its immense greaves. It stood still as a sculpture. Waiting. Watching, perhaps. It was impossible to tell if _anything _lay beyond that darkling great-helm.

"Careful, lads . . ." Sergeant-at-Arms Davs whispered. "Easy . . ."

It lingered silently. A challenge more acute and insulting than any given voice.

A pikeman I didn't know was the first to break. He let out a rage-filled growl and charged. The legionary tore ass at the silver warrior as if he might get the drop on it.

"No! Damn it all, wait!" Davs barked.

The armored figure's next movement was almost disappointed and dismissive. It dropped low with a skim of metal and then drove its axe up in a sweeping vertical arc. The pike held before the legionary fell apart. So did his forearms.

The pikeman raised leaking stumps to uncomprehending eyes. A desperate wail choked from his lips – and then the axe met his throat in an arc of moonlight. There followed a wretched gargling noise as the man's head tipped from his shoulders and fell like an afterthought into a clump of reeds. In the light of alchemic flames and the rising moon, the blood that bubbled from the slumping body looked thick and dark as fresh molasses.

"Hector!" Donnelly howled. "Form up, lads an' _kill this bastard_!"

The six remaining men of the 18th Pikes formed a horn-shaped crescent, moving quick and precise as flocking birds. They eyed one another nervously, weapons held at the ready. When I took a step to join them, Donnelly Davs roughly elbowed me in the shoulder and hissed, "Wait, sir. He's ours."

With but a gesture from their Sergeant-at-Arms, the Hylians fell upon the armored figure with vengeance upon their tongues.

Two men skidded in at a sprint, pikes sweeping before them like boathooks. With a casual gesture of its left arm, the warrior deflected the first attack with its shield. The second pike landed on one of suit's gargantuan, beveled shoulder-plates. Its head skipped off the shining armor with a shower of white sparks.

The warrior suddenly pivoted, snapping about without hesitation or surprise. It was a movement of clockwork, stop-on-a-dime precision. Caught in a wash of momentum, its cape spun up and around the figure like a gore-filled funnel cloud. Firelight rippled over the warrior and I caught a glimpse of something within its helm: An iris, flashing amber as the setting sun.

The eyes of the man whose pike had struck armor widened. His face blanched into a pallid death's head. He had no time to react as the battle axe fell upon him. His ringmail may as well have been made of crepe paper. It – and all of his torso above the ribs – came apart in a spray of unraveling viscera.

I stood silent, stunned, gawping idiotically. The smell of the pikemen's blood and disinterred bowels was like an iron haymaker.

This wasn't fun. This wasn't glorious. I didn't like this at all.

Three men now approached from three angles, attempting to pin the warrior in with extended pikes. They carefully advanced on the monster, placing their pike heads well ahead of them. Donnelly Davs shouted encouragement, fell back, and planted a foot to prepare for the killing assault.

When I blinked next, I perceived an insectile blur. Suddenly, two legionaries' pikes were severed halfway down their shafts. A third man lay just beneath the surface of the Kerneghi. What remained of his face was unrecognizable.

One of the disarmed men died with an axe through his ribs. The next had his carotid artery severed on the warrior's backswing. This took somewhere less than two seconds.

All I could think was: He moves so fast. How the fuck can he move so fast?

Davs was howling for blood, for glory, and most of all for the lives of the newly dead. Now it was just he and I and the grim, solid little man they called Pebble. I had barely moved a muscle. I had only watched it all unfold as if it were a particularly morbid stage performance.

Enough. I careened forward, shouting and swearing nonsense. Just a quick dash and I could help the pikemen win this fight.

Pebble glanced in my direction for just a moment and then the armored warrior was upon him. The legionary managed to duck the blitzkrieg first cut of its axe, dancing back as best he could on clodhopper legs. Pebble pulled his pike back and then swept it up at his attacker, driving at an angle that should have taken it straight into the mouth slit of its helmet.

I winced.

The pike struck steel. A dolorous clang. The shaft of Pebble's weapon wobbled and threatened to splinter. The pikeman stumbled back.

On the other side of the armored monster, Donnelly Davs approached at a trot. I duck-walked directly behind him, hoping to coordinate an assault on this vicious steel horror.

I watched as the warrior slid forward as if on rollers and hacked off Pebble's left forearm. Dark burgundy speckled the river. Pebble valiantly attempted to get control of his pike. It was as if his injury was a brief inconvenience that would soon be put right.

Then the axe swung again. About three-quarters of Pebble's head spun off into darkness. I was close enough to the geyser of blood that drops pattered against my breastplate. A brief noise – like warm rain on a tin roof.

"No no NO YOU BASTARD!" Davs wailed.

"Sergeant, wait –" I began to yell.

The Sergeant-at-Arms sped into a spray-trailing charge. His skilled hands held his pike with bone-white knuckles.

The silver-and-red warrior reared up like a cobra –

[_Davs jigged right, snarled, and readied his weapon._]

– opened its arms as if in greeting –

[_The lone Hylian fighter let loose a cry of such fury and despair that it struck against the walls of my heart._]

– and cleaved Sergeant Donnelly Davs from the crown of his skull to the point where his legs met his crotch. A wet splintering sound more grotesque and insensate than any I'd yet heard. Blood rained in a downpour. Two halves of a man fell in horizontal arcs – in opposite directions – trailing black fluid and fibrous tendrils. There was a delayed double-splash as the bisected corpse struck the river's swirling bosom.

And it was over. Wind whirled smoke and flame. The stink of blood was so thick it was a mantle.

The silver warrior took a single step forward, over the butchered halves of the Sergeant-at-Arms. Its greave fell like a depth charge.

One man. One man had killed – no, _slaughtered_ – eight Hylian legionary soldiers without even breaking his stride.

I shook my head and stared and felt hot wind rushing over me like a demonic benediction. I gazed upon this silent malefactor and saw the inevitable sweep of all violent death. Within the shadowy depths of its helm I now beheld a pair of deep amber eyes, blazing with the fury of all Hell's engines. They drank in the world as if it were a limitless expanse wherein all that moved were simply prey.

And now they focused upon me.

Just me, now. Just Linus Olsen.

_Just the Hero_.

It took another step. The sublime figure loomed like a nightmare loosed from legend. Something whispered into existence by firelight and at last given its day in the world.

Just the Hero, I thought. Just me. Alone.

My heart shuddered. My lungs flared.

Yeah.

Let's do this.

I straightened my back –

[_Reflected flames danced over its armor_]

–and planted my heel–

[_A red-mottled monster_]

–and felt my shoulders stiffen–

[_Its mighty axe drizzled blood and bits of gore_]

–and raised my sword–

[_Those ember eyes narrowed_]

–and prepared once more for battle.


	43. 43

**43**

"If it isn't the much . . . vaunted . . ._ Hero_."

The voice that issued from the helm was loud, distorted, and rolled on an edge like a rockslide. I felt a grim shudder curl through me as the creature spoke. Shades of charnel houses swam beneath its syllables.

The steel phantom who had murdered the men of the 18th Pikes stood with its axe hanging at its side, as if simply loitering. From my angle, the figure rose like a dread monument against the backdrop of the tall, spine-like tangle of boulders. Vermilion designs weaving over its armor pulsed slowly, as if to the beating of some malign heart. Its silken cape flapped and rippled in the torrid, corpse-scented wind.

It said, "I must confess that I was afraid that we wouldn't meet today, Hero. It looks as if Fate is funnier than I ever gave it credit."

I said nothing. The breath that sweltered in and out of my body was a burning mist.

My gaze alighted on the tumble of river rocks. I saw what looked like a small black stone moving amid the boulders. It was, I realized, a tiny octorock furtively crawling away from the napalm pyring the chunks of granite. The animal slipped silently into the dark river and disappeared.

"Then again," the warrior mused, "maybe I shouldn't be surprised. It simply wouldn't do not to pay my respects to the guest of honor."

The flickering edges of those half-glimpsed eyes widened.

"After all . . . this is _your _party."

Bewilderment joined the fear and loathing that pumped through me like bile. I stared and panted and held my stance as if my life depended on it. It _did _depend on it.

It came to me that I needed to act soon. If I was going to win out where so many others had failed, I needed to strike hard and fast and without the chrome knight's foreknowledge. Adrenaline and mortal terror had rendered me quick as a mongoose in times past. I had to trust in those same things now. And though the knight's armor had shrugged off Hylian pikes as if they were candy canes, how would it fare against the Master Sword?

An image came to me unbidden: A dirk-wielding, dark-skinned moblin falling to his knees, lifeblood squirting through his thick fingers, his fine mail sliced as easily as soft cheese.

Okay. Maybe this can work.

I tensed.

The warrior barked, "Nothing to say, Hero?"

A chuff of lupine, mocking laughter.

"And here we were told that you were a mouthy little bastard. Quite the dry, cool wit. Why, I heard a rumor that you even traded quips with Elkan Fir-Bulbin, and I _know_ he was a talker. Always jabbering, that one." The monster's tone turned almost ruminative. "We're well rid of him, really. Too bigoted. Too political. All should be welcome in the glorious chaos of Ganon's new order, and yet the snout idiot kept calling for culls and pogroms. It's half the reason why Lord Ganon sent him south – to keep the overeducated jackass from poisoning the well."

A sigh; an audible, clangorous cluck of the tongue.

(I thought: Good. If it has a tongue, I can cut it out.)

At last, I found my own voice. Dredging it up from the swampy, paralyzed depths of my lungs took considerable effort. "You didn't . . . you didn't have to kill all of them," I heaved. "They just wanted to help me out of here."

A snort of derision. "You do know that this is a war, right? And far be it for me to call you a hypocrite, but you certainly didn't spare any quarter with _my _boys a few minutes ago."

Who the fuck does this guy think he is? I thought angrily.

I spat, "Don't drop that shit on me! If you hate empty talk so much, don't try to confuse me with some bullshit moral equivalency. Those moblins were invaders. Had we not killed them, they would have gone on to murder innocents."

Slyly: "Would they?"

"Christ, you're worse than Elkan!"

"Wrong," the warrior said. It slid a heavy greave through the water. Another slow step in my direction. Was this caution or was the bastard toying with me?

Act, Linus. The next time that thing moves, go for it. Catch it off guard. You can do this!

The silvery hulk continued, growling, "I'm nothing like Elkan. He was a pawn who thought he was a bishop. At best, he was a knight – and that's being awfully generous. Good at his job, but completely expendable in the long game. In the end, he let ideology take hold of him so tightly that it constricted his brain. That's what really sent him south and right into your waiting arms. Professor Pig lost sight of the big picture."

"And what is the 'big picture?'" I snapped.

"This!" the warrior said brightly. It spread its arms and swung that dripping axe out like a drum major's baton. In the gesture was encompassed the river, raging fires, insensate wreckage, broken corpses. The whole of Kerneghi Gorge. "All this! Don't you see, yet? You must surely see by now."

"All I see is death. Death and madness. You're all fucking insane."

"Then you don't see at all," it sighed. "This is glory. This is beauty and bliss and wonder. These are Ganon's great works. Through him, all the world will know this treasure."

The warrior let loose a smoky chuckle. "And I shall take such pleasure in bringing these truths to the people of Hyrule."

"Even if it's the last thing I do," I murmured, "I'm going to kill you, monster."

The warrior _giggled_. Its entire suit of armor trembled with husky, tittering laughter.

"Oh, _Mister Olsen_. Really? You're fitting in here better than I ever thought possible." The warrior's helm tilted sideways. Any eyes within were swallowed by ink-black shadows. "Look at you. All dramatic speeches and oaths of vengeance. Soon enough you'll be wearing a green tunic and taking a vow of silence."

Another utterly unnerving giggle echoed from the empty helm.

"Apologies. This is – haha. You're just so _serious _right now. It's hard to keep up. And I get so excited at reunions."

I blinked wetly and shook my head. A kind of hot, smothering buzz had begun to vibrate through my skull. Flame-ghosts and smoke-wraiths danced like dire hallucinations.

"What . . . the fuck?" I whispered.

The warrior twisted and leaned. No face stared out from its eye slits. Patches of umber and scarlet and rose and peach and pewter rippled over its impenetrable surface.

It said, "Ah, but by now . . . don't you . . . hahaha. Of course not. The armor. This helmet. It's like a second skin. Sometimes I forget it's even there."

It shrugged – a movement made massive and robotic by its grand shoulder plates.

"How very silly of me," it intoned. "I should have done this straight away. It really is easy to forget. One moment."

My breathing clenched, shuddered, and stopped. Every scent I had inhaled on that last inhalation lingered. Moss. Damp granite. Sticky blood. Sweat gone rank and sour.

Before my eyes, the warrior's helmet _unraveled_. One moment it was solid forged metal; in the next, it shimmered liquidly and began to come apart, opening like a steel flower. The helm pulled backward, becoming threads and ribbons of living mercury. For a moment – before it slid down into the suit's rippling gorget – there stood a pulsing, vein-like net in the shape of a helmet.

There were hints of dark, lustrous hair. The contours of a head were revealed. A face woven in slow, uneven bands of hazy firelight. A strong jaw; wide cheekbones; darkling eye sockets.

All the lights and shapes and sorrows of the world lost their meaning. My head went leaden. My soul went numb.

For when the helmet had receded entirely – swallowed up by the uncanny body of the armor – I gazed into the smoldering eyes . . .

"Heya, Linus!"

. . . and sharp alabaster grin . . .

"Long time no see!"

. . . of the Nameless Woman who had saved me at Jeff Ramirez's party.

[_That's quite a tat you have_.]

Her teak-colored skin shone with beaded perspiration. Unruly strands of black hair stuck to her forehead in nonsense calligraphies. She wore the elated smile of a lunatic goddess.

[_Those strong, confident hands pressed me forward, and I could see that they were propping me up._]

No, I thought. Impossible. That's . . . what . . . I don't . . .

[_Or maybe it means that they're brave, wise, and powerful. That they've devoted themselves to a power and ideal handed down by the gods themselves._]

Of course, whispered the Other Me.

[_She smiled as if what she saw was a simple, unassailable thing of pleasure._]

I fell. This time, there was no one there to catch me.

[_Good luck, hero._]

It took me a moment to realize that I had, in fact, dropped to my knees. Not a single muscle felt solid. No nerve ending felt quite real. Every thought was an illusion. Cold Kerneghi water burbled between my legs, but that was happening someplace distant, to someone else entirely.

The Nameless Woman came closer. So much water was displaced by her footfalls that waves washed up around my thighs.

"What? Not happy to see a familiar face?" Her enormous grin faltered. "Oh God. You _do_ remember me, right? I mean, you were pretty drunk . . ."

She shook her head. "Naw. It's only been a couple of weeks, hasn't it? And I'd say that that slack jaw of yours tells me everything I need to know." The demonic smile resurfaced, like a great white shark out of a black sea. "Didn't expect to see me here, did you?"

I gaped.

"How wild is this, though? Us meeting here, now, like _this_. All dressed up and ready for the big show."

I goggled.

"And your hair! Jesus wept! I liked it long, man. I really did." She shrugged once more. "I guess that's the name of the game though, huh? If you want to play, you have to follow at least a few of the rules."

Then, thoughtfully: "I do kind of like the scar, though. Très sexy. You've obviously been through a lot since we last met."

"Hahaha . . ." I slipped.

Her voice was a whitewater rumble. "It is kind of funny, isn't it?"

I answered: "Hahahahaha!"

It was her turn to fall silent. The woman's face locked into a grinning rictus.

What she didn't know – or could only guess – was that all of my functioning cognitive processes had been destroyed. In their place howled a vortex of such malignant panic and mania that no rational thought could long survive. I felt as if I were falling.

You see, I had reached a single, unavoidable conclusion. It wasn't new. It wasn't even expressed with particular novelty. It was, however, pure and unbending as iron.

I gave it voice: "This isn't real. It can't be real. This is a fucking dream!"

The Nameless Woman's petrified smile shrank, sutured, and closed. She stared at me, droplets of sweat and naked horror stark upon her lips.

"What?" she murmured.

"Hee!" I ejected. "This really is funny! After all this time. I get it! I really do!"

Her expression melted into something part confusion, part revulsion.

I loopily clarified, "Haha . . . you're just some, some fuckin' bullshit piece of flotsam my subconscious mind coughed up. A, a memory of some weird chick I met at a party once! Hahahaha!"

She frowned. "Oh, Linus," the Nameless Woman breathed, "you have no idea how much that hurts me."

"Doesn't matter!" I groaned. My whole body rocked forward giddily. "You're not _her, _man! You're just a . . . fuckin' embolism or stroke. Schizophrenia. Maybe just the world's worst acid flashback."

"I assure you that I am quite real, Linus," the Nameless Woman said.

I shook my head fervently. "You can't be in both places!"

"Stop it."

"This is a dream," I whispered desperately. "Just a dream. Always has been. So wake up. _Wake up._ Wakeupwakeupwakeup!"

"Aw, Linus – this is just getting _pathetic_," the Nameless Woman said with exasperation. She stood with axe crossed over her shield, one half of her face buried in darkness and the other awash with umber witchglow.

"How can you be here?" I muttered. "You can't be here! Hahaha! I met you at Jeff's place."

Patiently: "Yes."

"In Los Angeles."

"Of course."

"That's impossible."

"_You're _here," she crooned. "Is _that _impossible?"

"Yes!" I cried. "Fuck yes it is fucking impossible! All this time I've wondered how fuckin' crazy I'd have to be to think I'm living in goddamn Hyrule. In a video game!"

I limply drew out my left hand and waved it at the fire-and-water hellscape churning about us. "Now I have an answer: _This _crazy! Holy fuck!"

The Nameless Woman said, "You're trying my patience. This is not how it's supposed to go. Pick yourself up and stop this."

I didn't.

"Look at me."

I couldn't.

"I told you to LOOK AT ME, YOU COWARD!" In an instant, that sultry voice rose into a feral, incandescent howl of rage. It was such a sudden explosion that I twitched and snapped up, heart seizing. "FUCKING LOOK!"

I did. Her eyes were wide and unblinking. They burned like the heart of a dying star. Her features had contorted into an ebon war mask.

She growled, "Where is the brash bastard who I watched challenge a man half-again his size? Who braved the Lost Woods without hesitating? Who brought the sword to moblin raiders and won the day?

"Where is that oblivious Casanova? What became of my beautiful backyard hero?

"Don't tell me this scared, shaking thing before me is the _real you_, Linus. You can't do that."

Words caught in my throat and rattled there. All I managed to choke out was:

"I'm insane."

The Nameless Woman screamed. A frustrated, guttural, animalistic screech – filled with depthless fury.

"No no no!" she frothed. "This is not fucking happening. Not now. Not after everything! I was so _close_!"

"You're not real," I gibbered. "You're not real. You're not real. None of this is real."

Quite embarrassing, now that I recall it. Fucking shameful, really.

She bellowed, "Shut the ever-living fuck up! What the hell is wrong with you, Olsen? A minute ago, you were ready to throw your life away in order to avenge a few pissant Hylians you'd known for – what – a half-hour? I go and jump the gun by showing you my face . . . and now you're a quivering wreck."

The Nameless Woman slashed her axe out so savagely that thunder followed in its wake. "Horseshit!" Spittle sprayed from her predator's teeth.

She suddenly stomped out to the outcropping of boulders, cape flowing behind her like a trail of gore. The Nameless Woman seethed silently for a moment. Then she drew up her weapon and brought it down on a rock the size of a steer.

"This!" And the axe roared.

"Is!" And the axe screamed.

"Fucking!" And the axe howled.

"BULLSHIT!"

With a sound that was very much like a bomb going off, the massive chunk of granite blew apart completely. Stone shrapnel rained across the river. Thick, mineral-scented dust drifted across the shrouded expanse.

The Nameless Woman slumped exhaustedly in her armor, breath heaving close to hyperventilation. Her eyes were manic. Nonetheless, her next words came at a hoarse whisper.

"I refuse to let this stand. I've come too far and fought too hard for it to end in this kind of _anticlimax_." She stood to full height, dripping perspiration as if in a sauna. "I obviously made a mistake showing you who I really am. It was inevitable, but now I see now that you're a bit . . . _delicate_. And here I was – your biggest defender. Looks like I'm going to have to toughen you up a bit."

Her words were like icicles, driving inexorably through my flesh. My entire body trembled so badly that I had to wonder whether I was developing hypothermia from the river water welling up about my legs.

I watched as the Nameless Woman advanced like some argent avatar of destruction. Her irises blazed hot as branding irons. The flow of designs across her armor throbbed as if pumping liquid garnet.

She declared, "You think this is a fucking _dream_, Hero? You think you can wake yourself up? Well. I think it's time you learned just how real all this actually is. I think it's time I make you realize just how real I can be!"

I said nothing. I wanted nothing more than to crawl away. I imagined lighting a pipe full of Maui Wowie and sliding under the covers with a video game controller in my hands. It was such a welcome daydream that it almost brought tears to my eyes.

"Come, Hero," the Nameless Woman intoned. "Fight me."

No.

No, that was the last thing I wanted to do. Please. No.

When I continued my stunned run of silence, the woman who had killed my comrades made a sound low in her throat, like a wolf ready to rip my jugular out.

"Linus Olsen," she said. "If you do not stand up and use that sword of yours to defend yourself, I _will _kill you. I will cut your fucking head off without a second thought. You will die shamed and anonymous. No one you care about will ever know what happened to you. There will be no songs of praise. No hero's funeral. You will die alone, and that death will be a pointless and cowardly one."

She grimaced. "There is nothing in the world I would rather do less, Linus. But at this point, you've left me no choice."

Do it, said the Other Me. He spoke as if from a dank cell, buried beneath the stone of my feeble terror. You were so ready before. Why not now?

I can't! said the Surface Me.

Does it matter? snapped the Other Me. He leaned against the panic-forged bars of his prison and contemptuously spat, No matter what you do, you're pretty much dead.

But . . .

Do you want to die like this? On your knees? _Really_? There is no escaping this through inaction. No conquering your fear. The only way out is through, Linus. And if you die . . .

But I don't want to die! I cried out internally. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die!

"Get up, Linus. Please."

[_I don't want to die_.]

Then get up! howled the Other Me.

"Stand."

I stared helplessly.

The Nameless Woman snarled, "Stand and FIGHT ME you simpering shit! You're the fucking _Hero_, not some craven, whimpery little faggot!"

Better to die on my feet, I contemplated. Better to die fighting.

[_I don't want to die_.]

I felt like I might burst into hysterical weeping. Even so:

I stood.

Stiffly, painfully, shakily . . . I stood.

Almost ecstatic relief flooded the Nameless Woman's features. "Good. Good! Much better." She smiled encouragingly. "Now, the sword."

God. The Master of All Swords felt like it weighed more than every sword combined. It was only with forearms straining to their limit that I slipped it into a two-handed grip. Once more it felt like an alien thing – just some senseless relic that I had no business even touching, let alone using.

"Good. Very good." Her voice was like scotch and cigarette smoke. It was barely audible over the snap of burning trees, clashing armies, and the insistent rush of the river. Eyes half-lidded, the Nameless Woman murmured, "Now. Show me what you've got. Give me a fight to remember, Hero."

"How can you possibly be real?" I whispered.

She answered, "You never questioned my existence in Los Angeles. Why do so now? Why question at all? You have but one purpose in life, Linus – to fight me. And survive. Nothing else matters."

I moaned, "Who are you?"

"Here and now, my real name isn't important." Like tendrils of some silvery plant, the helm reformed about her face and cast it back into shadow. All that was left was the radiant magma of her eyes. Her voice was rendered once more into a sexless, metallic growl. "As for the moment, dear Linus . . . you can call me Iron Knuckle."

I tried to think of something more to say and realized that all the words had gone dry and fallow. Inside, a piece of me was still screaming, babbling, trying to curl up and stop the relentless lurch of this endless nightmare.

But there was no running. No escape from that titan axe. No denying those fiery eyes. No solution but to fight.

[_I don't want to die_.]

I swept the Master Sword to my side. Breaths burst rapidly from my lips. My knees locked and my thighs quivered.

The Iron Knuckle also crouched, cape billowing like a tsunami of ethereal blood. Her armor echoed brutally about her. The stance she took mirrored my own – axe slung diagonally at her side, tower shield thrust before her like the blade of a bulldozer.

There rose a razored whisper:

"Come on!"

She charged. It was like watching a locomotive go from standing still to full-steam-ahead in the fraction of a second. The Iron Knuckle became a red and silver blur through the heart of our shared darkness. Those huge, ungainly greaves seemed to barely touch the surface of the water. A plume of spray shot up behind her like the wake of a speedboat.

My jaw went slack and my eyelids peeled back until I thought my eyeballs might pop out of their sockets. So. Fucking. Fast!

Yes. Quick as the devil . . . and headed straight for me.

All the right chemicals poured into my brain. My reflexes fired like lightning and before I even knew it, my boots were propelling me backward. A gazelle's leap – some joyous dodge of which I barely thought myself capable. Crystalline water trailed from my heels, glittering orange as opals.

I landed with a sureness I thought impossible. My feet planted themselves between securely positioned stones. Icy water splashed over my calves and ankles. Ahead of me, the Iron Knuckle drew up and adjusted her footing. The massive suit of armor squealed as she tensed, then sprang.

The axe ripped through the air like a meteor. An almost-indescribable slicing sound followed it like a tail.

I compressed myself downward, avoiding the blade's arc by millimeters. Before I could even consider my next move, the battle axe dropped like a guillotine and smashed the submerged rocks between my feet. My calves began to burn as I once more threw myself back. And back. And back.

"You can't dodge forever, Linus!" the Iron Knuckle hissed. Hideous joy drifted behind her words.

She was right, of course. Though I didn't have a plan, there was no way I could continue like this all night. I had to – yes – I _had to_ find some way to fight back.

I side-stepped to the right, finding the movement somehow much harder to accomplish than the balletic leaps I had been taking. A boot suddenly plunged into a deep spot in the river, toes jamming between smooth, heavy rocks. Old Friend Panic's greasy claws caressed my juddering heart.

The Iron Knuckle chortled, winding my way for another run.

[_I don't want to die_.]

Then come on, you fucker!

I wrenched my foot up out of the stony depths, then dashed right hard as I could. Even as the steel-coated monster tracked out to follow, I pulled my body in an arc that would take me to her side. After all, that magic helmet of hers had a serious weakness, didn't it?

Oh, you bitch. I bet your peripheral vision's for shit!

It was my turn to charge. A full-out sprint toward the Iron Knuckle's right shoulder. Though her helmet's eye slit was turned away from me, there was no way to tell whether those beast's pupils could see me. No way to know exactly where that theoretical blind spot began and ended.

Well. This was one way to find out.

I drove the Master Sword before me like a spear, aiming for the runny shadows between her shoulder plate and gorget. Like the blind spot, there was no rational basis for this target – it was simply the place I chose in the half-second before impact.

With a titanium shriek, the Iron Knuckle's entire suit of armor spun about – as if the body inside was little more than wires and clockwork. The same kind of precise, mechanical counter-move I had seen her employ against the 18th Pikes. I watched helplessly – too bound up in my attack to stop – as the Iron Knuckle punched out with her immense tower shield.

Sword met shield; the shield repelled the sword like a ricocheting bullet. A clash I felt through every bone in my body. I too was repelled – almost flying off my feet as I clattered backward.

I grunted, staggered, struggled to find definitive footing. The Iron Knuckle was already in motion. She strode forth, silver plates undulating like the scales of some cyclopean reptile.

She didn't use the axe this time. Instead, she swept a heavy gauntlet out in a dismissive swat. A casual backhand. It struck the side of my head with the force of a sledgehammer and sent me spinning.

The world keeled and all my vision went liquid. My ears rang and porous holes spread from the corners of my eyes. I stumbled backward, reeling, half wanting to pass out and half to vomit.

Stop. Wake up, dammit. Find your fucking feet!

I did. Somehow. I shook my head with the sensation that a hammer was tapping at all the places where bones knitted together in my skull. My teeth ached and I could taste blood like liquid copper bubbling along the edge of my tongue.

"Tch!" the Iron Knuckle expelled. "This is sad, Linus. You're makin' me cry."

I rasped, "Fuck you! Fuck you. Fuck you." I blinked wildly and clutched at my side with one hand. Everything still spun as if on some great, mocking pivot.

"That's the spirit!" she chuckled.

"Fuck . . . you . . ." I murmured. Body quaking, I tried to get some distance between me and the deadly reach of the Iron Knuckle's monstrous axe.

Think. Think, damn you! She has to have some weak point. Some chink in all that armor. Someplace I can slide my sword and make it meet flesh.

The moblin with the dirk, I reminded myself. The Master Sword had cut that mail as if it were hot as the sun. I was sure now – absolutely certain – that it had not been some fluke. I had to find my time to strike . . . and then trust in the sword.

You can do this, Linus.

There was no time left to plan. The Iron Knuckle fell upon me like a mountain of steel. Droplets of liquid diamond and ruby raced along her gauntlets.

She pressed the attack without pity; without flagging; without hesitation; without mercy. Her movements were gray viper blurs. The muscles in my legs and arms were hot with pain and exhaustion, but the Iron Knuckle moved as if each assault and parry were her first. The breaths that rumbled from the interior of her helmet were heavy with delight.

I darted in and chanced a horizontal cut that skated off her breastplate uselessly. The sword threw up a cascade of red sparks. When she threw the axe in a precipitous uppercut, I felt its edge bite the tip of my nose. An almost insultingly small cut, stinging like a rebuke. Blood dribbled down over my upper lip and formed a gruesome mustache.

Swoop, swing, slash: The axe fell with savage momentum. I tried to block with the flat of the Master Sword, but the force of the first attack it absorbed almost sprained both my wrists. Thereafter, I decided that blunt parrying was far less desirable than simply dodging.

Which, as the Iron Knuckle had so astutely pointed out, I couldn't do forever. My ankles already ached like they were full of broken glass.

I stepped left; she stomped to follow. I dodged right; she leapt with me. I backpedalled; she closed the gap within a heartbeat. We whirled and stepped through a vapor-choked purgatory, lit only by flame and the occasional flash of moonlight. A waltz through the flooded halls of Hell.

A quick glance backward confirmed that this little dance had pulled us entirely around from where we had started. At my back rose the up-thrust fang of granite, jutting from the river at least ten feet into the air. About it, gooey splatters of napalm still burned bright as lanterns.

I found myself actually thinking: Maybe if I climb, she won't be able to follow . . . or maybe I can get the drop on her . . .

Don't be retarded, Linus.

In my heedless backwards scramble, my heel caught on what I thought was a chunk of driftwood. When I looked down, I saw that my boot was actually stuck in the crook of a splayed arm, rigid as a tree branch. The arm was connected to the half-sunken corpse of one of the Hylian pikemen that had died fighting the Iron Knuckle. He laid face-down, entrails drifting away from his belly like gently bobbing, purple-gray seaweed. The water about him was rosy pink and filled with minced organic bits.

I felt my wide eyes leaking. A sniff of diluted blood and spilled bowels clenched my gut like hairy fingers. I tasted rancid bile.

You don't have time to spew, Linus. You have to kill that part of you and never let it return.

[_I don't want to die_.]

Fucking _move_!

With a disgusted kick, I disentangled myself from the dead legionary and shot out at a run. The Iron Knuckle was hard on my heels.

I spun about, a growl scrabbling full in my throat. With my left foot planted hard in the rocky soil of the riverbed, I met the Iron Knuckle's advance with a senseless sweep of the Master Sword. The armored woman brought her shield up to counter it, but she wasn't the only one who could step in during a parry: I used the momentum of the blocked strike to propel my entire body to the left. Then I drove into a dead-on, calf-blazing sprint.

See, I had eyes on that cape of hers.

Nice fashion statement, I mused. Mind if I use it?

Rounding within inches of the Iron Knuckle's armor was an unpleasant experience. For some reason, approaching those shining, flawless plates felt like standing too close to a transformer box. _Something _flowed off the metal like a subtle electric field – but whatever it was tingled deeper than the hairs on my arms. When I stepped to her side and prepared to grab onto the red flow of her cape, I felt that _something_ buzz like a nest of flies down in the soft center of my bones.

I managed to hold my shit together long enough to reach out and take hold of the Iron Knuckle's billowing cape. Material slick and sheer as spider-silk pulled between my fingers. With all my might, I yanked on the fucker in an attempt to wrench her off balance. The warrior grunted and – despite the immense weight I sweated against – began to cant my direction. As I was positioned up against her left side, she had no way to hit me with that damnable axe.

Come on. Just give me one opening.

Something unexpected happened. The cape suddenly twitched – as if flexing some alien, internal musculature – and slithered from my grasp. It bunched up and pulled against the back-plates of the Iron Knuckle's armor. There it shivered like a sheet of disembodied flesh. The fucking thing was _alive_!

"Shit!" I exclaimed. I had to throw my torso forward to avoid pitching onto my ass from inertia.

Abrupt rage energized my limbs. With a screech of frustration, I lashed out at the Iron Knuckle's back. There was a dissonant ripping sound. A ragged, scarlet ribbon fluttered through the night.

Well. At least I kind of ruined her cape.

Before I could savor this insignificant victory, an alloyed elbow impacted my ribs. My breastplate stove in as if it were made of tin foil. I found myself actually apologizing to the much-abused bones as I heard them crack. That awful, evergreen snapping sound. To this day, I'm unsure of how I didn't pass out right then and there.

Before stumbling back out of range of the Knuckle's limbs, I took a useless swipe at the warrior's side. The Master Sword made an ear-assaulting noise like a car crash, but barely even left a scratch on the thick plate.

Despair oozed through my tingling extremities. I shook and staggered. Sweat stung at my eyes. The nicked tip of my nose burned. Those broken ribs filled my torso with a sweet, familiar, enervating agony.

The Red, I thought. I have to somehow get one of the bottles out. I have to . . . oh Christ . . .

The Iron Knuckle stepped over the stones of the river, flames of battle wreathed about her formidable shoulders. Within the funereal depths of her helm, I saw reflected eyes like a demon's and the grin of a madwoman.

She jabbered, "Yes! Yes yes _yes_! See what you can do? Don't you _see_?"

It hurt too much to speak. It hurt too much to even breathe. _Time out!_ I wanted to cry. Give me a second! Just a quick break!

The warrior stalked closer and crowed, "Yessss, good good good Linus. That's the stuff. Much better. Much better!"

No. There would be no break. There would be no mercy. There would be no sense in any of it. No explanations; no rationale. All I could do was play the game. All I could do was finish it.

I raised my sword. Its chipped blade shone with such light that, for a moment, I thought it had come aflame. I took one last, big breath – redolent of gasoline and rot.

The Iron Knuckle opened her arms as if to embrace me. Come on then, she was saying. Come on and finish this.

She laughed uproariously. A bestial chorus. "Hahahahahahaha!"

[_I don't want to fucking _die!]

And I _saw_. Saw the gap between her massive breastplate and the steel covering her belly. Saw how I would have to run straight up to her. Saw how I would have to turn the sword and plunge it _down_, into the great black canyon of the gap.

I wrapped my fingers in an unbreakable seal about the blue pommel of my sword. The metal was warm and slippery. When I pulled back my shoulders, it felt like pieces of me had snapped off and were tumbling sharply through my chest. A body full of shattered parts, like an irrevocably broken machine.

"Hahahahahahaha!" she howled. Arms ever wider. Shield raised to the side.

Come at me! the Iron Knuckle seemed to announce. Come!

So I did.

I launched myself at her, already prepared to twist the sword around and slide it backwards. Ready to dodge the axe and dart about the shield. Oh so ready to drive my steel through this monstrous woman's skin and organs.

She drew back the axe, high over her shoulder. Preparation for a colossal swing.

And there it was! My opening! There it was – if I could – _just_ – there there _there_ –

I jabbed the Master Sword out and sprinted in a full-bore assault – right toward _that spot_, between the plates on her abdomen.

"Hahahahahaha!"

The axe plummeted.

Move, Linus – there _right there_ almost _there_.

And in the corner of my eye, the great battle axe flew like incarnate doom.

Go!

"HAHAHAHAHAHA!"

My sword was like vengeance. Its aim was true.

_KLUD_.

It was a strange sound. A _meat _sound. I had expected something else. Something that took into account the mail and padding, perhaps. When it ended up sounding like something emitted from the back room of a deli – something almost _workmanlike_ – I was earnestly surprised.

The emotion lasted less than a moment.

Then:

The pain was a drug. A hallucinogen. It crushed images into my brain like a piledriver. In the passing, flickering fraction of a second, I saw: my sister's smile; a peeling orange; blood on linoleum tile; gray carpet fibers; the maggot-chewed corpse of a mouse; smoke hovering against a sunset; blue eyes and freckled cheeks.

[_I don't . . . want . . . to die_ . . .]

There followed a period of time I can't account for. Certainly no more than ten seconds at the outside. Probably only two or three. Nonetheless, that empty time was like freefall. When I opened my eyes to a broken landscape, I felt as if I had been tossed to the floor of the world like a forgotten doll.

On my knees again. Evidently, I had collapsed there in a boneless daze. The Master Sword lay gleaming beneath the surface of the Kerneghi River. A lost treasure just within my reach.

My breathing was very shallow. I felt cool and listless. Sweat – or was it splashes of river water? – dappled my skin. The memory of pain was at once distant and incredibly immediate. It was something that had happened a lifetime ago, and yet I realized that it still enveloped me like a shroud.

Distantly, I heard laughter. It grew weak, sputtered, and fell silent. In its place erupted a nonsense sound, wet and astonished.

For my part, I didn't make a single noise. I knew that the pain unfolding through me was worse than anything I'd ever felt in the entirety of my life, but I didn't really think I should be in a hurry to holler about it. As of the moment, the world-consuming ache of it had a sense of the academic.

Huh. My fingers had gone numb. Despite the excruciating, mind-flaying agony that threatened to swallow me in darkness . . . I couldn't feel the fingers on my left hand.

My vision was soaked in tears. All shapes were blurred at their edges. I allowed myself to trace the source of all that grand, awe-inspiring pain. My head turned. My eyes slid over my left shoulder, across the battered expanse of my battered breastplate, and over its edge to what lay beyond.

My arm dangled like chunk of poorly butchered meat.

Just below the twitching tattoo of the Triforce, my left arm had more or less just . . . _come apart_. A flashflood of dark crimson poured from the gaping wound. Red twists and filaments sprang from its edges. Through the gush of blood, I could see thin yellowish bands of fat, shredded muscle, quivering ends of severed capillaries, and the pale taut lines of straining tendons.

Oh, I thought. That's weird.

It was only when I saw the dull white of bone – protruding through the mangled flesh in broken splinters – that I finally screamed.

And screamed.

And screamed.


	44. 44

**44**

There are certain questions about yourself that you never want to have answered. For instance: How much pain do I have to experience in order to lose control of my bowels?

Well. I had received my personal answer to that question. _This _much pain.

Where once had been the wet-dog reek of soaked wool trousers now wafted the rank aroma of semi-liquid shit. As if things weren't bad enough already.

In another plane of existence, the battle for the valley yet roared. All its sounds and sensations came to me on muted wings. It was a concern for another lifetime, another person.

Bathed in the hellfire colors of burning napalm, I could not stop looking at the ruinous thing that had once been my left arm. Blood washed over everything below the elbow, running so fast that droplets slid from my wrist. My fingers trailed uselessly through surface of the river. I could see a dark plume spreading from the spot I huddled in.

My screams began to spit and gurgle hoarsely. Trapped below a ceaseless mantle of suffering, I started to jabber.

"It's not supposed to be like this!" I wailed. "It's just a g-g-game. A fucking video game – oh Christ just a – aaah – Christing _toy_! Ah, _fuck_!"

Icy water caressed my buttocks. Mud embraced and enveloped my knees.

I gibbered, "A goddamn E-rated game! E for Everyone! They're just supposed to turn into fucking smoke and disappear and shit. It's supposed to be colorful and playful and _fun _oh Christ oh oooh God it _hurts_ . . ."

My head tipped back. The world lost all its torque and bearings. A mad, skittering swirl of blood and steel and shit and mud and _pain_, so much fucking pain!

"Help me!" I keened. "Aw God someone fuckin' _help meeeee_!"

I sobbed the words now, howling and weeping and dripping snot and spittle.

"HEEEELLLP! HEEELLLLLP MEEEEEEEEEE! HEELLLLAAAAHP! MEEE!"

Not exactly my proudest moment.

The words lost their forms. Nonsense syllables bled into hysterical bawling. The edges of objects began to lose definition. A tingling numbness ran like cool electric current down the back of my neck and spread into my shoulders.

"Oh." A splashing step. "Oh. Man. I think I may have overdone it a bit."

A whisper like rolling mercury. The Iron Knuckle bent into my field of view. Though she still wore the full helmet, I could see within its confines the smoky gold of her eyes. They were very wide indeed.

"Well, shit," she murmured.

I will give the Iron Knuckle this much credit – as close as she currently leaned, she didn't comment on the stench rising from my body. There was something almost conciliatory in her armored body language. A gesture of surprise and goodwill. When she pulled even closer, splashing great flows of river water over my legs, I began to tremble and weep even louder.

[_Please oh please don't let me die_.]

"Shhh. Hush. I know it hurts. But if I were you, Linus, I would drink one of those potions of yours. Otherwise, you're going to bleed to death within a few minutes."

Everything swam as if inebriated. Old Friend Panic undeniably stood behind me, but his ministrations were loose, imprecise, unwieldy. My mania was unsure and flailing. All the same, I knew that the woman spoke true – I needed to take action or the axe wound would kill me.

My fingers shook violently as they fumbled over the hardened leather pouches ringing my belt. Undoing their clasps was surprisingly difficult with only one hand. They kept slipping from my moist, uncertain grasp.

The gold elixir, I thought. Remember? That one . . . that the medic said to only take in a . . . in a fuckin' emergency . . .

This was absolutely the sort of emergency the surgeon had hinted at. I needed that glimmering potion so badly it took on a kind of religious importance. In the next moments – as I pulled open the leather container I thought held the tincture – I begged all the gods that would listen that it wouldn't just kill me outright.

The first pocket I pulled open contained three vials of the Red. My breath quickened into a thin, desperate whine. Another clasp undone. A gilded shimmer deep in its bottom. Yes!

And then I saw what actually lay within . . . and I felt as if I might pitch onto my side in a dying heap. Despair thrummed through my body like a sickness.

Only shattered glass and golden goop remained in the bottom of the pouch. At some point during the fighting, the vial containing the elixir had been completely shattered.

"Oh God . . ." I murmured.

Half-dead digits scrambled into another pocket. They wrapped about the first vial of red potion they encountered. A death grip – literally. Halfway between the pouch and my clammy lips, I used my thumbnail to pop the stopper from the vial. Even though the armored murderer that had almost killed me crouched no more than a yard away, the only thing in the world that mattered was that scarlet liquid.

I felt the Iron Knuckle move so close that I could sense the static thrum emanating from the surface of her armor. It was impossible not to look at her – that dark silhouette of a face hidden within her helm. Sparks of reflected light shone across her luminescent irises.

Suddenly, a steel fist gripped my left forearm. The Iron Knuckle's gauntleted fingers pressed electrically into my flesh.

Oh Christ. Oh Jesus God, she's going to pull my arm the rest of the way off. The open vial hovered over my gaping mouth. Terror obliterated all thought and action.

The Iron Knuckle said, "Here. I'll help you hold it together until the tonic takes effect. Go ahead. Swallow that sucker." A flicker of pity in her eyes. "This will hurt."

I thoughtlessly dropped the sour potion down my throat. Even as the thick liquid slid over my tongue like half-set gelatin, I knew what she was about to do. There was no way to steel myself for it. It came with the inevitable horror of a car accident.

Just as the Red landed like a biological weapon against the walls of my stomach, the Iron Knuckle pressed the ruined halves of my arm together with a wet _schlup_. Then – just as promised – she held it in place as the healing elixir ran its grim course.

Broken shards of bone ground together. Ragged nerves corkscrewed against gobs of shredded muscle. Blood welled up and bubbled in the crook of the arm. I actually felt the mangled flesh twitch, shudder, and slither about as the medicine made its blind attempt to mend me.

The sensation was unfathomable.

Everything that I was convulsed and fell into a feral madness. I wanted to pass out. I wanted to pull myself away. I at last wished for death. I howled until my throat was raw.

After a senseless eternity, it was done. I panted like I had run a marathon. My eyes could focus on nothing and my neck lolled drunkenly. A feverish sensation gnawed at my joints, as if I were emerging from a particularly wretched bout with the flu. The pain echoed in me like something eternal and unavoidable – as if I had lived with it all my life, but only now knew its name.

The Iron Knuckle still held fast. Her vice-like hands pressed her butcher's handiwork closed. She said, "Take another."

"D-does it work that way?" I choked.

"Christ, man. It can't hurt."

So we did it again. She gripped the mutilated gulf of the wound while I swallowed another round of the Red. It wasn't so bad this time. Mere agony instead of pain so deep I had wanted to die. I still screamed a bit, but my vocal cords ached so awfully that there was little catharsis in it. In the end, I settled for simply shaking and sweating and crying, my stomach curdled and every nerve ending aflame.

At last, the Iron Knuckle – that gilt monster hidden behind that previously Nameless Woman – let go of my arm. She stood and took two heavy steps backward. Wordlessly, she observed the quivering wreckage where once Linus Olsen had lingered. Her gaze felt bleak, clinical, and remonstrative.

"Many would have died, Hero," the Iron Knuckle whispered. "You are much stronger than you look."

I was only half-conscious then at best. My eyes flicked from detail to detail without any understanding. I heard the Iron Knuckle's voice as if it travelled through an intervening wall. The depth of the shock I had fallen into would have terrified any first responder.

Still: I realized that the Red had probably kept me from death's door – at least, for a little while. The wide, canyon-like axe wound was now a much smaller, glistening red fissure. Blood seeped from its edges, but it no longer rushed in a frightening tide. I still couldn't feel my fingers, much less move them.

It struck me that the Iron Knuckle must have dropped both the battle axe and tower shield, as neither was in sight. She had to have done so before helping me. What the shit?

"That should do for now. Somebody's going to have to look at it, but the red stuff ought to keep you from bleeding out," the hulking warrior declared.

Beyond the Iron Knuckle, the world swam in and out of focus. At some time during our duel, much of the ambient smoke had cleared away. Stands of reeds and cattails swayed beyond the giant's-tooth boulder. As it turned out, we had fought surprisingly close to the western bank of the Kerneghi River. A few-dozen yards away, a sheer, stony bluff jutted from the charred slope. Moonlight sifted down from a vapor-smudged sky.

It was as if a darker, wider world had been birthed by our violence. Singed grass crackled as wind swept across the slope. The stony heights rose like ancient battlements. Among them, broken siege structures clutched the night sky with ink-sketch fingers. The few surviving, unburned trees swayed lazily A thin haze clung to everything in a ghostly nimbus.

There were a thousand questions that I should have asked then. Who was this savage woman? Where did she come from? What had she been doing at a certain split-level home in Westwood a couple weeks back? How could she move and fight like she did, sheathed as she was in that massive suit of armor?

I settled for something rather more elemental:

"W-w-what _are _you? Why ah-are you d-doing this?" I blubbered.

The awful glint of teeth glowed within her helm.

"I am the Fist of Ganon, Linus. His ultimate warrior. A knight triumphant, born in fire and blood. As for my reasons?"

I wished to God that I couldn't see her smile. Of all the things I didn't want to gaze upon at that moment, her warm, guileless grin was absolutely at the bottom of the list.

She said, "Violence is its own reward. Its motion is my joy."

"W-what?"

"Please. Of all your modes, Linus, I suspect that I like this slow-boy-at-the-back-of-the-bus persona the least. You know what I'm talking about." A shrewd smirk; a knowing chuckle. "I _saw _you, Linus. While you and those Hylian fools played at war. Saw that look in your eye. You liked all that fighting . . . all that _killing_. It suited you."

"No. Y-you're wrong," I whimpered.

And instantly knew that it was a lie.

"Oh, don't play coy. It was so obvious. And I understand!

"In the heat of it, the violence _lives _in you. It flows through your limbs. Replaces your blood and bile. Makes the world go slower and clearer than it's ever been. It's better than any drug ever grown or manufactured."

There were no words. No true and proper response.

"You ask me why I've done this," the Iron Knuckle purred. She once more swung a palm out to the black expanse of the battle. "So I ask a question in return: Isn't this reason enough? This . . . _perfection_?

"You and I – and don't say a thing, dear Linus, until you've heard me out. You and I? We are a breed apart. I saw that on the night you stepped up to defend Little Miss Likes-Kids from the fool on her arm. We know that true joy and wonder and satisfaction lies just within our reach – and that we need only extend our fists to grasp them."

I stared in confusion and physical shock. Every inch of me felt sheer and slimy. Every few moments, violent tremors ran from the soles of my feet to the back of my head.

There came into this dark woman's voice the conviction of a priestess. An ecstatic quaver ran tremulously through the flow of her words.

"On this night we have been given everything we need, Hero. With our hands we reshape this world. Make it as it should be – this joyous paradise of rage and violence and desperation. Look upon our works and behold the natural end of all things! There is only one truth at the raw heart of the world – and I have laid it bare!

"Haven't you _seen _yet? Don't you smell it, Linus?" she bellowed. "Can't you feel the _blood_?"

After all the comparisons I've made between the events of Kerneghi Gorge and Hell, I suppose that it's only fair to admit that I don't really believe in the place. Hell, I mean. Not as a physical location, at least. Certainly not as the site of eternal torment in exchange for a few petty sins. And I most definitely did not believe in it back then.

Nonetheless, that night in the gorge I caught a glimpse of _something_. A purity of horror and violence. A depth of soulless inhumanity so immaculate that it seemed like it had to flow from some infernal fountainhead. I think that slivers of this sight had been revealed to me before – in the glazed eyes of the dead Shiekah attendant and the melting skin of Elkan Fir-Bulbin. However, it was only during the Battle of Kerneghi Gorge that I felt as if I had peeked through a crack in the surface of the world and beheld unsullied malevolence staring straight back.

For in those next moments, I _did _see. And smell. And feel.

The splintered prongs of a dripping ribcage rose from the river, the organs within a pulped slurry. Along the steaming riverbank there were piled upturned faces with black-swollen skin and smoking, empty eye sockets. Their lips peeled back, bubbling, from teeth scoured marble-white by fire. Under the light of moon and flames I saw that the river flowed with languid bands of pink and red and scarlet and burgundy, thick as syrup.

Oh God.

My nostrils hung heavy with the scent of earth churned with gallons of blood and body fluids. A brick-red sludge seeping through the rocks and cattails. The pork-sweet stink of charred flesh hung in the air like a taunt. Cloying melted fat and spicy trampled grass and septic bowel contents and napalm like a greasy godlet. The bittersweet taste of the Red crouched slippery along the aching contours of my tongue.

A blood-slick ocean of madness washed up around me, dark and unstoppable as death itself. A smothering tide of sadism, mutilation, and decay.

Her voice was an exultant temblor. "Isn't it _incredible_, Linus?"

An eyeball bobbed past in the shallow water, the optic nerve trailing behind it like the tail of some odious tadpole.

"ISN'T IT GLORIOUS?"

Though the epiphany did not come to me fully formed, I knew then – at that instant – that I would devote my life to stopping this. I could do nothing less than oppose this endless abomination until my last, shuddering breath and spasming gesture. It was only later, when I was not so completely physically broken, that I breathed that pledge aloud.

I felt my body crumbling. Extremities were filling with frozen pins and needles. My eyes rolled up in my head and I saw nothing but glittering darkness.

A steel palm brushed my cheek. "Don't give up on me now, Linus. I still have such sights to show you."

Eyelids snapped open. The whole, horrible tableau took focus once more. The gleaming platinum of the Iron Knuckle's body; the itch of smoke and copper in my nostrils; the waves of constricting pain boiling through my body. I still sat helpless as a lamb, unable to as much as move my fingers. The night glowed red at its edges.

Though it didn't come as much of a surprise in my state, I hadn't realized until that moment that we had gathered an audience.

Arrayed in a loose circle about the area were about a dozen moblins and bokoblins. Their expressions were solemn, features defined sharply in the firelight. They were soot-caked and bowed down with the burden of combat. In their hands were weapons chipped and scuffed and outright broken. In their eyes was not curiosity or anger or cold vengeance – only a kind of weary watchfulness. It was as if it were their unspoken duty to bear witness to this, my cosmic nadir.

The Iron Knuckle turned her helm slowly, taking in each of the soldiers without command or comment. When she turned back to me, there was a wry edge to her voice. "Ah . . . acolytes," she crooned. "I apologize if this is getting a little heavy for you. I just get so jazzed by all this! It's been so long since I've really been able to share, y'know? This opportunity to bask in the gospel, so to speak."

"What ah-are you going to do with me?" I wheezed. "If y-you're not going to k-k-kill me . . . why bother?"

She all but cooed with affection, "Ah, dear Linus. Dear Hero. Killing you would be so easy. Easy and _pointless_. Though I can see how you could currently disagree, I am first among all the people of the world in hoping that you achieve your destiny."

"I don't understand."

"Think back. Remember that night we first met. All that heat, body odor, terrible beer, and vapid conversation. You know. That night at the Ramirez home. On that night I saw the spark of something _wonderful _in you, Linus Olsen. Wonderful and – only now, I realize – very fragile. It would be such a waste to snuff that spark out. Better to let it kindle."

The exhausted followers of Ganon blinked heavy eyelids. Their breath whistled from snouts and between cracked lips.

"And from that kindling, we shall coax it into a bright and roaring flame. Oh yes, Hero – I am certain that it lies within you. That potential. Give it a little time and careful grooming, and I believe that the thing I saw that night in Los Angeles will blaze like an inferno. I hope that one day I might stand in its light and heat and see the world for what it truly is."

"What the fuh . . . what the _fuck_ are you blabbering about?" I asked weakly.

Her dagger-toothed grin shone like a half-moon in the inky interior of the great-helm.

"You're the _Hero_, you dolt! I keep trying to tell you that. I knew it from the moment you went to scratch at that nifty tattoo. When you confronted that steroid-addled dipshit – when you risked your life for what you thought was right – I knew that Fate had truly brought us together. You're _the Link_. How could I pass up the opportunity to watch as you grow into and fulfill that role?

"_That's _why I won't kill you, Linus. Not now, at least. There may come a day that you forget the lesson I taught you tonight. Should that day come and you shrink away from this – your one and only destiny – I will act on the promise I made earlier. No more warnings. Embrace the sword and duty of the Hero, or it won't just be an arm I take next time."

Her words slid across me slow and slick as crude oil.

"This is my pledge to you. My sacred bond."

Okay, I managed to think. So she's crazy as a shithouse rat. Should have seen that one coming.

So focused was I on the Iron Knuckle's rantings that I barely noticed when one of the moblins standing sentinel in the river suddenly perked up. He was a dark-skinned, heavy-armed fellow with a scarred snout. Standing some yards to my left, he abruptly cast his eyes out into the forge-glow pulsing through the valley. The moblin started, a shiver of fear rolling through him visibly. He pointed southward, along the burning length of the river.

"Yaht ta ira! Yaht ta lo!" he cried. His voice was high and wavering.

All eyes turned along the line of his extended finger. Nervous whispers ran through the ring of watchers. Hands pulled up battered axes and short swords.

At first, I saw nothing but fire-lit gloom. Then came a burst of movement – and I beheld something increasingly extraordinary. Something miraculous.

This is how I first saw him:

A pale specter skated between the reeds, skimming rippled pools with blurred strides. It made no sound over the crash of battle, even when its boots slipped in and out of water. The splashes were silent as fish lighting at dawn. Through the whirlpooling smoke and steam it dashed, coming right for us. The river's translucent hellglow painted it in coruscating patches of charcoal and gold and umber.

It was a man. Tall, swift, and powerful. A lithe figure like a Greek fresco come to life. His long limbs moved like a field sprinter's, barely seeming to touch the ground as he approached. I couldn't make out his face – something that I very quickly realized was by design. Though I caught the outlines of pale, almost delicate features, the entirety of the man's head was tightly wrapped in layers of dust-streaked cloth. In fact, these funereal wrappings covered much of the fellow's body. His arms, legs, and torso were swaddled in the stuff. They encircled his head in a taut, rough turban. The wrappings gave him a corpselike aspect that – despite my current predicament – still managed to be somewhat unnerving.

A tattered, ash-gray cloak wrapped about his shoulders and billowed behind his body with each sinuous leap. Beneath this – and over the layer of rough bandages – he wore a strange, full-body undergarment the color of the sky just after sunset. It writhed and rippled with the runner's every movement, giving the impression less of clothing and more of a serpent's undulating scales.

Despite the layers festooning his body, I could tell that he was Hylian. Wait – no. The ears sweeping back from his head were too long – too sharply peaked. In the small window where his face was exposed, his eyes flashed like twin rubies.

In my delirium, a name cut across the back of my mind like a frozen razor. I dared not speak it. I dared not hope. Broken ribs only half-repaired by the Red ached as my heart slammed against them.

It took some seconds for the gang of moblins – not to mention the Iron Knuckle – to fully react to the oncoming figure. More than enough time for him to come within twenty yards of our grisly little prayer circle. The enshrouded Shiekah's steps slowed and grew more cautious – but still he proceeded.

Finally, the Iron Knuckle sputtered, "Oh, this is like my fucking birthday, man. I swear. Best night ever!" She suddenly whirled and shot an accusing finger at the dozen-or-so soldiers surrounding us. The armored woman announced imperiously, "That man is a Hylian assassin and spy. He has murdered dozens of your compatriots. Do with him what you must – in Ganon's name!"

They looked about at each other, apprehensively licking their lips and tightening their grips about their weapons.

"What are you waiting for? Take care of him, you fools!" the Iron Knuckle yelled.

The newcomer – [_don't say his name; don't even think it_] – coiled backward as the contingent of Protectorate men reluctantly swept down the river toward him. A sinuous, feline motion. A whipcord hand shot out to the figure's waist as he crouched low, like a tiger readying for the killing pounce. The pack of mobs and boks fell upon the man – almost a dozen against one.

There was a presence at my side. An electromagnetic hum resonated nauseatingly in my collarbone. The Iron Knuckle leaned very close and whispered, "Oh. Oh my. You're going to love this. Watch closely. This is gonna be a _treat_."

The instant the wave of soldiers began running, the shrouded man hopped back and swept his hand out from beneath the folds of his cloak. In it there shone a long, elegant weapon. It wasn't quite a scimitar and wasn't quite a saber – its curved point and single edge held the weight of the former and the heft of the latter. A sleek, no-nonsense sword. He held it one-handed, perpendicular to his body like a steel promise.

The Shiekah watched the moblins trot his way with narrowed eyes. There followed no flourish, no declaration, no cry of war: He simply leapt – and all time seemed to slow by his motion.

Those tired-looking Protectorate men were not prepared for this onslaught. They had clearly hoped to box the Shiekah in – to simply crush him beneath their numbers. Instead, the moblins and bokoblins found their quarry suddenly among them, flying over the surface of the river in a series of grasshopper bounds. None could decide whether to lash out in counterattack or fall into defensive formation. Their harried cries warbled in the wind.

The first to fall did so clutching at a neck that quickly became an unfolding lid. The sword slashed through the bokoblin's flesh and bone clean as a fresh scalpel. The others could do little but blink with astonishment and attempt to take the Shiekah on his backswing. They clambered across the riverbed in shaking clumps, axes raised defiantly – but the Shiekah was already gone. He danced across the course of the Kerneghi as if the blood-drenched water meant nothing at all. When he rushed back into their borders they were again unprepared.

He dropped three in quick succession. A moblin lost an arm at the shoulder; another squealed pathetically as his guts poured into the river; and yet another flipped end over end as the Shiekah's backswing separated him from his legs. An atmosphere already wet with blood became utterly choked with it. It fell through the air in a pinkish mist.

"Ah," the Iron Knuckle said. "God _damn_."

My fingers drifted numbly in the coolish whorls of the Kerneghi. At some point my jaw had come unhinged and I could taste the sour, ferrous flow of the wind.

God. How can I even properly describe it? He didn't so much move through the fight as _flow _through it. No movement was wasted. The sword and its wielder moved as a single entity, never wavering. It was like ballet – and the howls of the dying were the musical accompaniment.

A bokoblin tried to steal up behind the Shiekah – a pair of daggers outstretched, forearms tense as cables. It lunged, shrieking, and the Shiekah spun to meet it. Those knives met only the ratty cloth of the Shiekah's cloak. Gabbling despondently, the soldier had time only to stumble before its head parted ways with its shoulders. The cloak soaked a glistening crimson.

The Shiekah seemed unable to stand still. He had killed five – no, six now! – men in a space of seconds, but he never once stopped to rest. His form flitted like a hungry wraith through the troop of Protectorate fighters. Pouring blood and pain fell in his wake.

A seventh: A burly moblin hefted a mace like an iron hitching post. With one meaty paw he tapped nervously at the thick domed helm atop his plate armor. A clear tactical decision flitted through the soldier's eyes: take the attention now, hope the armor soaked up the Shiekah's blinding cuts, and wait for the others to move in for a decisive kill.

If _I _saw this in those brief seconds, the Shiekah must have sensed it like telepathy. He never even stepped close to the armored moblin. His free hand dipped into the interior of his cloak and then flicked out quick as a viper's strike. The mace-wielding moblin fell backward with a pained grunt. A fountain of blood came boiling out of his helm. Before he keeled over completely, I saw the glint of some kind of throwing knife protruding from the moblin's lacerated neck.

"Haha. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful," the Iron Knuckle murmured. "I think I'm in love."

The Shiekah's sword wove. Wherever it moved, it was hung with threads of blood. He sewed a tapestry of swift, quiet carnage. Ducking, dashing, bobbing, bashing, sliding, sweeping, swiping, slicing, parrying, pouncing, whirling, dodging, leaping, stepping, killing. And killing. And killing.

At last – and really, after just a few blindingly insane minutes – only two Protectorate soldiers remained. A representative pair: One moblin and one bokoblin. Strangely enough, the moblin was the same scar-snouted fellow who had initially called out the Shiekah's approach. The two stood staring at the Shiekah as he sashayed slowly through the water. His blade ran freely with the blood of their compatriots. I could see his brawny chest heaving against its cover of bandages and blue plates. There was something almost dementedly playful about his movements – like a cat toying with a mouse just before disemboweling it.

Both Protectorate soldiers glanced my way. They stared with blank-eyed terror at the Iron Knuckle. They turned their gaze on the languidly advancing Shiekah. Back to the Iron Knuckle.

"Prig thet!" the moblin spat. He threw down his sword, turned on a clumsy heel, and ran as fast as his stumpy legs could carry him out into the night. The bokoblin blinked its wide, pale eyes – then took off after his comrade.

The Iron Knuckle howled at their dimming forms: "Cowards! I'll see you flayed and quartered for this!" Despite her volume, there was no conviction in the woman's voice. After the casual bloodbath we had just witnessed, I suspected that she couldn't blame the two men for putting their tails between their legs. I certainly couldn't.

I felt her pull away from me, standing fully upright with a swish of rearranging plates. We both watched with anticipation as the deadly Shiekah turned our way and flicked blood from his sword in a single motion. The Nameless Woman let loose a trilling growl of naked pleasure.

He stalked nearer very cautiously. His red eyes snapped between me and the armored figure at my side. When he had come to within a half-dozen yards of us, he stopped and fell into an uneasy crouch.

Finally, a better view of this sudden newcomer: About his eyes, his skin was very pale and shone wetly with perspiration. His wrappings were speckled with scarlet. A few unruly golden hairs poked from beneath his head-wrap. Chalk-white, uneven scars ran raggedly over his knuckles and callus-laden fingers.

I saw now that the scale-like, indigo undergarment was actually an interlocking series of lacquered plates of light armor. Many were nicked and pitted, belying the invincible grace with which he had just dispatched an entire gathering of Protectorate fighters.

The Iron Knuckle seemed genuinely excited. At some point, she had pulled the entire length of her red cape about her body. It sat more like a cloak now, covering her so that none of that thickly layered armor showed below the shoulder plates. There was an almost girlish bounce in her voice as she greeted this new player in the game.

"'Welcome, champion! The 'Shiekah Shadow,' I presume! Infamous hunter-killer of the Royal Legions. An assassin by any other name, huh? Haha. Perhaps we should call you 'Sheik' instead, eh? Yes. I think that's more appropriate – don't you, Linus?"

Her wink was grotesque.

"I have to admit that you do impressive work. You could say that I'm a bit of a fan after that little show you just put on. Sadly," the Iron Knuckle let a theatrical melancholy slip into her voice, "I must insist that we get to the serious stuff. Do you have business with me, little Sheik?"

Something inside me rocketed with joy and hopeful excitement. Yes! Sheik! That's right! _Sheik_!

He straightened. His eyes were full and piercing. He said, "In the name of King Daphnes Harkinian, I am here to claim Linus Olsen. He has been decreed a ward of the royal family and is thus afforded their protection. Leave him to me."

His voice was a murky tenor. The cadence of a boy aristocrat.

"No," the Iron Knuckle giggled.

Sheik snapped, "You do not understand – this is not a request. I am ordered to return with him. In turn, I order you to remand him into my custody."

"Is that supposed to _scare _me, little Sheik? The word 'order?' Do you have any conception of who it is you stand before?"

A thin shiver ran visibly through Sheik's body. The movement summoned dread like a sepsis in my guts. He said, "I have heard tales of you. The Iron Knuckle. A champion of the Protectorate and one of Ganon's great lieutenants. They say that you and the Horned Man ride at the forefront of the Black Caravan. None can decide which is the stronger – but they say neither has ever been defeated in battle."

"Oh, I so love good gossip!" the Iron Knuckle laughed. "You're well-informed for a Hylian lapdog. Ol' Darknut and I _are _a bit of a matched set, I guess. But, point of order? I despise the cocksucker. And when the blood starts flying, oh – you better believe I fight alone. I've _always _fought alone."

The woman glanced my way, chuckled, and said, "Ah. Right. Poor Linus here. Well – I still say that you can't have him. But if you want, you can give him a look-over. Confirm he's, ah, technically still intact. Just keep in mind that – as of tonight – this man is _mine_. Once you're done inspecting him, I'll do with him what I please."

I whimpered.

"Unacceptable!" Sheik growled.

"It will have to do," the Iron Knuckle said. "Either that or I just kill the both of you. Less fun for all parties, I assure you."

The Shiekah fighter considered this. The edges of his eyes crinkled with concentration. At last, he said heavily, "I will agree to these terms. From there, we will have to see."

"Ah! Good. Fine! I'll just get out of your way while you take a look at the cargo," the Iron Knuckle said cheerily. She stepped backward, sloshing noisily through the river. Draped in her cloak, there was something disembodied and phantasmal about the Iron Knuckle's movements.

Immediately, Sheik swept across the space between us and knelt beside me. As he ran, he sheathed his sword in a curved scabbard strapped closely to his hip. His brow knitted with worry. I was startled to see his scarred hands shaking slightly as he bent to get a better look.

A sounder mind than mine might have questioned the sudden appearance of so strange a savior. Who was he, really? Could he actually be the Sheik of video games past? And if so, what else did that imply?

None of those thoughts met me that evening. I simply croaked, "Hey. Nice to m-meet you. Big fan."

"Merciful goddesses!" Sheik breathed. "What have they done to you?"

From out of the purgatorial night came the Iron Knuckle's distorted voice. "Yeah. Sorry – really, sorry. That's my bad. I kind of made him fight me. Poor schmuck's got a lot of heart, but he had no idea what he was getting into."

"She did this?" Sheik asked. His fingers were surprisingly light as they probed the still-ragged wound bisecting my broken arm. Rancid agony raced up and down my body with the slightest touch. It was all I could do not to cry out – so instead, I simply bent double and moaned like a mental patient. Sheik pulled away and murmured, "Of course she did. You are lucky that you were not killed. You need a surgeon. Immediately."

"How'd you find me?" I asked drowsily.

Sheik replied, "We had word that the Hero was hereabouts. I was sent to look for you and, in doing so, heard your cries. Can you stand?"

I felt like I might melt into childlike tears. "I dunno," I whined. "It hurts . . . pretty bad. Pretty bad. I l-lost a lot of blood."

"Take my arm," Sheik said gently.

"What about . . .?"

"I beseech you: Take my lead. We will worry about that creature only if we have to."

"Okay." I tried to take as big a breath as possible. Jagged-edged pain clawed at my chest. I felt weak as a newborn as I extended my hand to gasp Sheik's cloaked shoulder.

In the literal blink of an eye, a flowing crimson wall appeared before me.

"Ah ah ah! I told you that you could inspect him. Nothing more!" the Iron Knuckle clucked. She stood between me and Sheik, blocking my view of the man. Within seconds, I watched him move beyond her, curving in a slow side-step away from the armored warrior. He began to circle the Iron Knuckle and I, stalking with the clear intent of discovering an opening.

"This man needs the attention of apothecaries," Sheik warned.

The Iron Knuckle said, "He'll be fine. Go back to your commanders and tell them so. He'll be in good hands. We won't kill him until Lord Ganon passes the verdict."

Sheik shot back, "You needn't kill him yourself! If those wounds are not tended to forthwith, he will die within hours."

"If you insist."

Sheik growled, "I demand that you let the Hero go!"

"Or what?" the Iron Knuckle laughed. "Will you _kill _me, little lamb? Me?" Her laughter became a wild snarl. "I, who am the very FIST OF GANON ITSELF?"

"Yes." Sheik took a visibly trembling breath, which pulled his facial wrappings against his lips. I caught the barest outline of bony cheeks. "If I must – and by the will of the three goddesses – I will destroy you, creature."

"Now that," the Iron Knuckle exploded, "is what I like to hear!"

With all the warning of an atomic blast, the massive, armored warrior shot from my side. Her titan gauntlets threw open the closed curtain of her cape. From within emerged a weapon I had not seen her even grab, much less use: A sword of such length and stunning weight that it made Walther Kael's bastard sword look like a butcher knife. The fucking thing had to be nearly as tall as I was. Its point tapered outward, ending the blade with a shape like an arch-edged diamond.

Where the fuck had she gotten it from so quickly?

Already Sheik was moving, propelling himself away from the reach of that giant blade. His thin boots glowed with reflected moisture. Out flashed the curved sword that had so effortlessly felled the Iron Knuckle's soldiers.

"Ooh. I've been craving a proper catfight!" the Iron Knuckle cackled. She swept her new, flawless sword up so that it stood before her vertically. How in the name of all the gods could she carry it with only one hand?

The Iron Knuckle called, "Do you challenge me then, little Shiekah killer? Do you have the courage to stand against one who has ripped whole armies to shreds and scattered them at her feet?"

"Absolutely!" Sheik shouted. "You will fall this night, demon! Your reign of terror ends now!"

His voice shook reedily. A weird sort of fear ran through it. Except . . .

Holy shit.

My mind turned to unbelieving jelly. Sheik's voice was not, in fact, quivering with fright. No. The man's words broke with _excitement_. Pure, happily anxious anticipation.

The Iron Knuckle could not contain her monstrous delight. She pumped her open fist and screamed, "Haha. Hahahaha! Then let's do this thing, motherfucker!"

For the second time that night, I watched helplessly as the Nameless Woman – the Iron Knuckle – the person who had slouched into my life like some dark living room prophetess – barreled forth in a kamikaze rush. This time, she had a proper opponent. Sheik matched her movement, switching his blade into both hands.

Through the burgeoning, black and red vault of the night, two blurs approached like colliding trains. Dirty white and silver. Crimson and gray. Two nations' destinies wrapped about their blades. An entire war perilously incarnate.

Their swords clashed with the sound of Ragnarok.


	45. 45

**45**

It was the darkest dance I'd ever seen.

The Iron Knuckle moved like a machine – fast, precise, crushing, implacable. Sheik flowed like water – loose, improvisatory, quick, seamless. It was a juggernaut versus a typhoon. The grinding of gears against the wail of the wind.

After the initial, bone-jarring collision of blades, they separated and circled. Sheik zipped along the river like a mongoose sizing up a particularly meaty cobra. The undulating flap of his cloak gave the Shiekah assassin the look of some dust-mottled phantom.

Titanic sword in hand, the Iron Knuckle trudged after him. Never in a hurry, it seemed. I knew for a fact that the Nameless Woman within that awful suit of armor could be just as swift as her opponent. Nonetheless, she strode into the duel as if savoring it. Deliberate steps took her into the dark, swirling heart of the river, where Sheik flitted gray as a twilight shadow.

Then: A blast of movement accompanied by a crash of steel. The Iron Knuckle dashed forth in a blood-red blur. That immense, diamond-tipped blade swept out like a platinum tsunami.

Sheik seemed to welcome the approach of the sword. He ran to meet it as one runs toward an old and dearly missed friend. At the border of its horizontal arc, he shimmied like a serpent and fell well below its frantic momentum. He flew straight into – and under – the blade's killing range.

His own curved sword sang once – twice – three times. An ear-mauling sound erupted as the blade's edge found no give in the Iron Knuckle's nigh-invincible suit. Amber sparks wheeled through the gloom.

Only by a salamander-slim movement did Sheik avoid the Iron Knuckle's crushing counterblow. The woman's fist crashed down like a steam-press. A gout of water erupted through the air even as Sheik skittered lithely to the Iron Knuckle's side. The Shiekah skipped backward with perfect gymnast's bounds as the great sword slashed through the air where he had once stood.

I just barely heard a strange, subtle sound. Something breathy, rhythmic, and half-suppressed. I was in no state to really be surprised when I figured out what it was – laughter.

Both the Iron Knuckle and Sheik laughed as they fought. They giggled and chuckled and chortled. The Shiekah's laughs came in a series of boyish, breathless bursts that followed him as inexorably as the tail of his cloak.

Completely fucking insane, I considered. I didn't apply this label to anything in particular. The phrase crossed my mind again and again – a frantic goldfish careering dementedly about its bowl. Perhaps I meant _the world _as the phrase's target. Almost certainly.

Sheik fell upon the Iron Knuckle again, arms held out from his sides as if in imitation of a soaring bird. In response, the armored woman threw her entire metal bulk forward, meeting the Shiekah not with a blade but with a brutal shoulder-check. Sheik tried to pull his charge into a dodging roll, but ended up taking a shoulder-plate to the side. There was a godawful sort of sound – something like tenderizing meat with a mallet – and the Shiekah spun off and fell into the river.

My insides seized. My tongue had long since gone dry as dirt.

But: Sheik was back up in an instant, his bloodstained cloak now heavy with river water. His free hand flew out, sharp silver launching from between his fingers. A throwing knife collided with the Iron Knuckle's helm and sent her reeling. The impact summoned a sound like the chime of a demonic bell.

The armored warrior stumbled back, spitting half-coherent profanities. As she regained her bearings, Sheik rose into twitching readiness. His hand slipped again into the inner folds of his cloak. Another short, weighted knife danced into his fingers.

"Not . . . nice!" the Iron Knuckle sputtered.

The Shiekah took a little more time to line up his toss. A few seconds of fervent concentration. Then his arm went rigid and the bladed missile went flying.

A gauntlet whipped up so quickly I thought that it must belong to some third party – a new challenger in this game of death. It didn't, of course – the Iron Knuckle simply reached out her hand, fast as thought, and swatted the throwing knife from the air.

"No," the Iron Knuckle groused. "We'll be having no more of _that _tonight, thank you."

Sheik started to swing his arm in for another knife and then hesitated. Something lively sent porcelain wrinkles spreading away from his eyes. His crimson irises twinkled fiercely. I swore that I could see the savage ghost of a grin through the wrappings about his face. He withdrew his hand and doubled his grip about the pommel of his sword.

"If you insist," Sheik heaved.

He sprinted forth in a serpentine zigzag. In the firelight, the Iron Knuckle's sword shone as red as if it had just been forged. It fell to crush the Shiekah – and Sheik's sword rose to strike back. Like that, they were back in it – all the way up to their souls.

They continued the dance across the course of the river, up over its banks, and about the cracked complex of boulders. Swords cast out before them, legs pumping like animals at the hunt. Each slipped past the other in a series of thrusts and blocks and thoughtless, full-strength uppercuts. Sheik jigged and the Iron Knuckle waltzed to meet him. Each by turns broke and tapped and boogied and jooked and jived and krumped and jitterbugged. When they came close – and Sheik's rash assaults assured this often – they tangoed as devotedly as lovers on a polished marble floor.

All the while, their quick breaths resonated with the depth of their pleasure.

Through it all, I found myself growing more and more detached from what I saw. Not just mentally – though my thoughts were indeed increasingly muddled and dull. My entire body was slowly, inescapably going numb. Though the double-dose of the Red had undoubtedly saved my life, I was still utterly broken. I could barely muster the strength to turn my head to follow the battle's course.

If Sheik – whoever the fuck he turned out to be – was to be believed, I was still perched on death's front stoop. Thus, this gelid dimming of my senses provoked in me an equally senseless panic. Something helpless and infantile and maniacally terrified.

[_Please don't let me die!_]

Before my eyes, the Iron Knuckle scuttled crablike between the split and seeping corpses of Hylian legionaries and Protectorate soldiers alike. Sheik pounced like a cougar, driving his blade before him in an impossible storm of curving strikes. Metal rang against metal as if in the depths of some twisted hellforge. Using the monstrous diamond sword's flat as a ram, the Iron Knuckle punched out and deflected Sheik from his line of attack. The assassin skidded through the water, dirty bandages soaking a dingy, uniform gray. He crouched in the current, one hand plunged into its flow and the other balancing his blade above his head.

For a moment, the two fighters sat perfectly still. They regarded each other raggedly. Their breathing was a humid gale.

"Hnnnn . . ." the Iron Knuckle purred. "Come on, little lamb. More. Come on! Come on come on COME ON! _KILL ME IF YOU CAN_!"

"As you wish!" Sheik laughed, panting. The sheer happiness in his voice was stunning. "I shall enjoy sending you to Hell!"

[_Please_.]

The Shiekah launched himself as if thrown from a catapult. A leap of such length that it took him right past his opponent, legs pumping to sprint even before he landed. The Iron Knuckle twisted like a dervish to catch up, but Sheik took off swiftly toward the field of boulders. With a hop and a plunge, Sheik mounted the slick stones sure as a mountain goat.

Oh God. He's escaping! I thought. He's gonna leave me behind! It was a self-evidently stupid thought – but hey, I wasn't doing so hot right then.

Clearly thinking better than I was, the Iron Knuckle trotted after her tormentor cautiously. The tip of her sword slipped through the surface of the river. Its path produced a clean, liquid slicing sound. For the first time that evening, I saw the armored warrior grip her weapon with both hands.

Sheik bounded from one rock to the next, seemingly without a destination. Here, there; forward, backward; toward, away. And then with a flourish, his thin boots propelled him into the side of the tall spike of stone at the center of the field.

A distinct _holy shit_ moment: The Shiekah fighter kicked against the side of the great boulder, coiled like a human spring, and rebounded back out over the river in a leap worthy of a dozen Olympic medals.

The reversal came so quickly that the Iron Knuckle had almost no time to react. She flinched back and tried to bring her sword to bear.

But too late.

Sheik soared through the steam-drenched air as if suspended. His sword was like a shining talon. Its arc of descent was so perfectly conceived that it felt predestined.

The Iron Knuckle made a faint, flustered sound.

I blinked.

There was a hideous sound of metal sliding past metal. A cracked drive-shaft sort of squeal. A heady splash of boots impacting the water.

That blink felt like it had eaten up hours of my life. When my eyelids sprang back open, Sheik knelt triumphantly in the middle of the Kerneghi River. His eyes were bright as planets on an evening horizon. His sword no longer sat in his hands.

Instead, it protruded from the mouth slit of the Iron Knuckle's helmet. Its length jutted from the dark space at an acute, cantilevered angle. The armored suit slumped back on itself with an air of benumbed shock. Within its bulk, nothing moved or made a sound.

Holy fuck. He did it!

I wanted to laugh joyously, but didn't have remotely the energy to do so. The thought of all that sound as it ricocheted against my broken ribs only served to make me miserable.

"Enjoy the darkness of the Pit, creature," Sheik breathed. He stood from the river's flow and breathed a sigh rattling with relief. Trembling with adrenaline and exhaustion, the Shiekah turned his face to me and arched his eyebrows. "And now, Mister Olsen, I will see you to that surgeon I mentioned earlier."

The great suit of armor tilted forward with a faint creaking. Its cape fluttered as if perturbed.

Sheik froze. All the happiness drained from his eyes like the last moments of a smoking match.

"FUCK."

The voice rasped loud as a bullhorn through the armor's seams. A moment later, an unsteady gauntlet rose up and plucked at the sword projecting awkwardly from the helmet.

"You're a clever one, little lamb."

Sheik spun about in time to watch his own blade pull from the Iron Knuckle with a metallic scream. The warrior held the sword between gauntleted knuckles and considered it with unseen eyes. Then she flipped it peevishly out into the dark, where it disappeared with a half-hearted _sploosh_.

"That was too close," the Iron Knuckle mused. She turned on us, irises glowing hot as volcanic craters. "Way. Too. Fucking. Close."

She drew up her gargantuan sword and let its point drift in Sheik's direction. Water dribbled from the blade in a miniature rain shower.

The Shiekah was once more a tight-wound doll of twitching muscle and crackling nerves. He held his empty palms out as if to steady himself. His sodden cloak clung wetly to his back and buttocks.

The Iron Knuckle declared, "Now. Now now _now_. Let's see how you deal with _Round Two_, you delightful little cunt. See, that was just a warm-up. An hors d'oeuvre. Now that I see what you're made of, little lamb, I think I'll show you just what I can truly do!"

Like a maddened witch in a stage play, the Nameless Woman let loose a cackle of boundless glee and malevolence. She raised steel arms and drove her eyes into the Shiekah before her as if he were a sacrifice tied to an altar.

Something in her form _changed_. In the faded gloom of guttering flames and my own wounded senses, it was difficult to tell just what it was that I saw. I was reminded of what had happened to her great-helm when she had "removed" it. A molten ripple traveled through the breadth of her armor. Her cloak spun about her shoulders as if caught in a hurricane gust of wind. Everything about her physical form seemed to come loose and shimmer moistly, like fevered flesh or spilled quicksilver.

"Hahahahaha! Get ready, Sheik! You're gonna _love _this part!" she howled.

The Iron Knuckle's armor began to change shape. Its plates slid apart as if made of putty. Edges and angles became jagged as mountain peaks. Something sickly and golden began to shine through the night.

Despair took hold of me. I wished only that I might will myself into unconsciousness. Before the manifestation of this cyclopean apparition, I wanted only to give up at last and sleep.

"THAT'S ENOUGH, MAYDA!"

A hale, masculine voice boomed through the contours of the encroaching darkness. Its words echoed sharply across the rocks and over the surface of the river.

I watched numbly as the Iron Knuckle's psychotic smile – still hideously visible through the corona of her transformation – twitched and faltered. In its place grew a grimace of disappointment and disgust.

"No," I heard her murmur. "Not now. Not now! Goddamn you, Vaati! _Not fucking now_!"

"STAND DOWN," the disembodied man commanded.

It was like watching a king cobra retract its hood. Within seconds, the Iron Knuckle's half-completed metamorphosis became a mass of jumbled silvers, reds, and coruscating gold. She stood cocooned in a roiling ooze of liquid armor. A cloying stink of graphite, iron, and ozone washed over the river. I could only stare in stunned amazement as the previous configuration of plates emerged from the pulsing morass. No more than ten seconds later, the Iron Knuckle stood as she had before she had even lifted an axe against the 18th Pikes. Every inch of her steel was immaculate. Only the giant sword stood as proof that she had been in battle.

She whipped about angrily and cast her voice into the smudgy shadows beyond the river bank. "Show yourself, you interloping bastard! If you have the nerve to interrupt me, at least give me the courtesy of doing it in person!"

Sensing a break in the Iron Knuckle's attention, Sheik broke and dashed my direction. He slid to a stop by my side, dropping strong but surprisingly gentle hands to my good shoulder.

"We must move. Forthwith," he said.

I looked at him dully as a stunned cow. "What?"

"Get up!" Sheik hissed. "Linus Olsen: It is imperative that you rise _now_!"

My dazed eyes skipped past the masked Shiekah, out to where the Iron Knuckle stood enraged. Her armor trembled with some unknowable, insensate emotion. She shouted, "You son of a bitch! Where the hell are you?"

Amid the mess of giant river stones, a voice quietly slithered:

"Ah . . . patience was never your forte – was it, Iron Knuckle?"

At first I saw nothing there, in the darkness beyond the rocks. Then: two arcs of what looked like electric current flared to life. Dual wisps of indigo plasma twisting and spiraling inward. Whirlpools of violet current like captured ball lightning. Vague, unnerving sparks like a pair of frozen fireflies. Beneath these materialized a vast, perfect set of teeth that glowed like moonlight. A grin – floating in the dark like something out of a schizophrenic's waking dream.

A darkness deeper than darkness detached from the shadows and strolled into the field of boulders. A crisp, exact garment of silken black. In actuality – a beautifully tailored suit. Both its shirt and jacket were black as oil – as midnight – as the deeps of the sea. From its collar hung a perfectly positioned tie of bright, electric purple. Silver cufflinks shone in the shadows like stars. Urbanity defined.

Amid the embers of the evening, the suit's owner came into focus. He was a tall, lean, elegant man. A long, severely boned face terminated in the jutting spike of a chin. Black hair swept back slickly from a high forehead and a pronounced widow's peak. It shone damply in the firelight, as if it had been tamped down with pomade. Dark waves of it fell past his ears like a curtain.

Eyes even darker than the Iron Knuckle's – though these did not shine with that ceaseless, mine-fire glow. Instead, this man's irises were like flat pools of liquid onyx. I thought – just maybe – that I saw another spark of incandescent purple in their abyssal depths. He blinked so little that it was disturbing.

The man's arms and legs swung long and loose about a broad torso. Those limbs moved strong and sinuous as snakes or eels. Despite the fact that he couldn't be any more than thirty-five or forty years old, his deeply tanned skin rippled with a constantly twitching matrix of lines and strained folds – as if the muscles and tendons contained within were at war within the surface of his body.

Everything about his posture spoke of spring-loaded tightness and whipcord readiness. It was as if he spent every moment of every day prepared to pounce.

He swaggered through the river as if getting wet was a concern for lesser men. Without a word, he abruptly hopped atop one of the same stones that Sheik had used to launch his final attack. The man's tar-black shoes dripped globes of river water. Still holding that imperturbable grin, the suited man raised his arms like a carnival showman.

"Hello, boys and girls!" the newcomer said cheerily. "Is everyone enjoying their evening?"

I could only goggle like a mongoloid.

Sheik whispered, "_Please_. Olsen. We are done for if you do not simply stand."

"Vaati . . ." the Iron Knuckle growled.

"Oh, come now," the tensed man smiled. "Who but those we command call me that? Least of all _you_."

The armored woman barked, "You have no right, you slimy cocksucker. This is _my_ battle! I want to see it finished!"

The man in the suit – fucking _Vaati_, man! – gestured my way. "I think that you're already most of the way there, Mayda. In fact, I'd say we've let you have a little too much fun tonight. That kid's a wreck."

His smile, I realized, was as groomed and joyless as a graveyard. He said, "You fucked up, Knuckle. Now it's time for you to stand back and let the big people do the talking."

Ever since he had appeared, something about the man had slipped splinters of itching dread between my fingers. He inspired a feeling of breathless consternation – of simultaneous fear and frustration. A heavy-metal ugliness that settled somewhere nebulous in my bowels. Something known . . . some_ word _that my agony-addled mind couldn't quite settle upon . . .

Oh.

Oh _shit_.

The word. The word was actually a phrase. _Déjà vu_.

[_I could just barely make out the figure that she talked to. He stood half-concealed by the frame of the sliding glass door, his upper torso arched back slightly. Whoever he was, he wore a suit so black and svelte that it seemed to shine._]

"You were there too . . .!" I breathed.

[_Skinny, tight-tendoned hands flexed and relaxed spasmodically as the nameless woman spoke. For a moment, his broad chest twitched with unheard laughter._]

"What?" Sheik whispered.

"That man . . . I saw him the same night . . . at the party . . ."

I swore that it was the same suit – though no doubt this man owned more than just one. Just a different shirt and tie tonight. Last time, the tie had been red as raw meat. But that grin? Well, I'd say it was unmistakable.

He seemed to notice my dazed, rapt attention. His head tilted to the side and he let loose a vulpine giggle. "And here I thought that the poor sap wouldn't get it." Vaati lolled his long neck in the Iron Knuckle's direction. "You may have no impulse control whatsoever, but I continue to be pleased by your judgment of character."

"Did you really come here just to gloat?" the Iron Knuckle snapped.

"Well – no. I suspect I'm here for the same reason you are. Things are going our way again, after all. The man of the hour is once more in our hands. And given the occasion, I thought I'd make a bit of a staff meeting of it." Vaati's smile was at once condescending and ingratiating. "Hail, hail – the gang's all here!"

"Please. You can do this. We must retreat. Please. I beg you," Sheik pleaded.

It was only then that I finally noticed the _other _figures edging closer – materializing out of the ringing darkness. Each stepped through the rocks as if rising to take communion. Three more silhouettes, gaining shape and definition in the night's orange witchglow.

The first came among us on horseback – riding a titanic, dark gray charger made all the more imposing by its silence. Its eyes were black and insensate as diamonds. The rider was a trim, sharp-looking man in armor. In one hand he lazily dipped a bronze-bladed spear. His armor was enameled a depthless ebony, inlaid with swirls of dark gold like poison honey. On his great-helm were attached a pair of mighty horns. They extended from his helmet so ostentatiously that they looked like they had been pilfered from a Texas longhorn.

He reined in his iron-gray mount some way from the stand-off zone between Sheik, Iron Knuckle, the man in the suit, and me. Taking his time, he let loose heaving sighs as he dropped his spear into an immense scabbard running from his saddle. He then reached up and stripped off his helmet, dropping its weight into his lap.

His face summoned in me a confusing swirl of emotion and memory. It was a normal – albeit craggy and weathered – face. His salt-bleached blonde hair swept back from a clearly encroaching brow. He had blue eyes and his eyebrows crinkled up as he smiled.

I recalled: Los Angeles by night. Waiting for a bus. The smell of diesel exhaust and hot asphalt high in my nostrils.

He pointed a gauntlet at the Iron Knuckle and winked. "Heya, Bright-Eyes. Nice to see ya'." His was a fluted, breathy, almost English accent. Without a moment's consideration, he drew a cigarette from a pocket on his belt and lit it with the quick, hidden flick of a match.

[_Hey mate. You got a light?_]

And all of a sudden, I was absolutely certain that I had met this man before – in the briefest of possible moments. On the night I had gone into the city to pawn the Master Sword, I had given him a quick swipe of my lighter.

[_Cheers._]

Was it true? Was it possible? Could this be anything but the feverish thrashings of my diseased mind? Was it a coincidence or a trick of memory? Was I truly, irrevocably mad?

Or had these people actually been following me before I even came to Hyrule?

The Horned Man took a drag from his cigarette, caught my eye, and gave me a quick upturn of his chin. Had I not already been half-dead, I suspect that the sense of unreality would have set me to screaming.

The next figure to step into the light was a sepulchral ruin, approaching at a slump and a shuffle. Compared to the others, he was almost gnomish in height. He wore only black and gray, mottled canvas pants and a black leather duster like the flapping silhouette of wings. The coat draped over his cancer patient's frame appeared to have been last cleaned in another century. It was faded, frayed, and streaked with mud and patches bleached white as bone.

Every curve of his ribs was visible through thin, filmy skin riddled with visible veins. Each of his audible breaths was short and urgent. Beneath a long mop of black hair thick with grease was a face that might belong to an ice mummy. At one time, you could have described him as Asian. Now his eyes were sunken so far in his skull they were like dull, distant marbles. A skein of pumice-gray stubble grew patchily over his chin and cheeks. His skin was the color of tallow.

He pulled up beside Vaati – or at least the rock which the man in the suit perched upon. The skeletal man made a sound like he was asphyxiating on a mouthful of dust. His mineral-sharp eyes fixed upon me. There glittered in their depths a hatred so pure that I felt it prickle across my flesh. Sublimated murder.

The final figure seemed to appear among the rest of them between blinks. There was a sound (_of tearing paper_) and a smell (_of burnt electronics_) and a sensation (_of vertigo in a cavern_). Then he stood with arms crossed, earth-colored tabards flapping up about him as if in exasperation. It seemed that the depths of my terror were endless – for I also knew this last man. At least, I had seen him before, standing at the outer reaches of all sense and sanity.

He was very tall. From his thick brown boots to the disheveled shock of his dark hair, he had to stand six-foot-six or seven. Sharp-looking instruments ringed his belt. Beneath his dual tabards, the man wore loose dark clothing and a boiled leather tunic.

But none of that really mattered. What I saw first – and what _everyone _probably saw, when I thought about it – was the mask.

It was a thick, brick-red plate that covered everything from his chin to far over his hairline. At first, I thought it was clay or ceramic – but then I saw it was actually striped with smaller, more crystalline bands. It was actually some kind of dark, half-polished stone.

The mask held no features except for two eye-holes and a very curious carving. This etching ran between the eyes and terminated on the mask's forehead. Oh so simple: Just a cross. But not really a _cross – _because of course it was a cruciform. The rest of the mask was smooth as the surface of a bowling ball.

I hadn't actually _seen _him before. Not in full. Only his flowing black silhouette against a blood-red sky. On a hallucinatory evening in Los Angeles, this man had crashed a machete against a garbage bin in challenge. Each strike like a diseased church bell. This man had delighted in my maddened fear and flight.

He cracked gloved knuckles and let loose a fast, airy chortle. Breath and words flowed from behind his sheer mask dead as wind over a wasteland. He had no accent and spoke as if perpetually hyperventilating.

"Look at 'em. Fuckin' geek finally got what was comin' to him." The masked man turned to the man in the suit. "Should we waste him, chief?"

"No need," Vaati said coolly. When the man in the mask and the not-dead dead-man growled lowly, the man in the suit said, "Ease yourselves. Today we all get a glance at our future. A kind of 'get to know your neighbors' night. The true beginning of this grand and wonderful game."

[_Something isn't right_.]

Before anyone else could get a word in, the man in the suit announced, "Let's all get to know each other, shall we?"

He flicked two fingers in the direction of the man in black armor, who breathed twin plumes of smoke through his nostrils at his name. "Darknut."

The hand danced to the gaunt, swaying man in the duster. "Stalfos."

And now to the masked man, who stared at me as if I were an insect desperately in need of squashing. "Armos."

"_Bishop _Armos!" the masked man corrected sharply.

"Whatever."

The man in the suit swept his palm to that previously nameless woman – perhaps called Mayda. "Of course you've met our dear Iron Knuckle." Even through her armor, it was clear that she fidgeted irritably.

At last, he drew his flight attendant's hand to his own chest. "I am Vaati. Right hand of Ganon and the troop leader of this merry little band."

[_Something isn't right about all of this_.]

"Linus . . . please . . ." Sheik whispered desperately.

At last, Vaati threw out an inviting palm to me. His face bunched up in a jolly canyon-land. "And here's the man of the fucking hour! The Hero of the Triforce himself. Sworn, eternal enemy of our master in darkness, Ganon. The dude destined to rise again and attempt to defeat him. We – who are the great generals and ministers of his Protectorate – are under blood-oath to oppose this man at every turn."

My eyes bulged. For a moment, my whole body buzzed with the energy of revelation. I choked, "You're the Inner Council, aren't you?"

Vaati laughed, "Inner Council? Are they still calling us that? Hmph. I really liked 'the High Ministers.' It sounded like a reggae band."

[_Something is missing. Something is amiss._]

Sheik's hand pressed into my shoulder as if it were made of titanium. Though he did not speak, the urgency of his grip was terrifying.

"Don't you want to introduce your friend, Hero? He seems like quite the scrapper. Sure seems to have saved your ass tonight," Vaati smiled. "Not that any of us are particularly surprised to see _him _here tonight. It is a night of firsts, is it not? Surely it's the work of Fate that both of you are here to help us celebrate the opening of this great enterprise." He cocked his head and took Sheik and I in with eyes that were almost saurian.

[_Something is seriously fucking wrong here_.]

And there it was. It clicked. The bottom fell out of the world.

"Your ears . . ." I wheezed. "You all have _round ears_!"

That Cheshire grin. Those dancing eyes.

I coughed, "You're all _outerlanders_! You're all from fucking Earth!"

"Bingo bango!" the man in the suit cackled. "Give this boy the prize."


	46. 46

**46**

How could I have been so blind? How in hell had I not noticed? It was so searingly obvious. So blatant. I had even gotten a good, long look at the Iron Knuckle without her helmet on – and yet, here I was.

Only now did I see that the Inner Council was made up entirely of outerlanders. I was at the mercy of a gang of maniacs and grotesques from Earth.

"Aw, shite. Looks like I owe you those quid, eh chief?" the blonde man known as Darknut said petulantly. The droll, fuggy streets of Liverpool wound beneath his words. He nodded in the direction of Armos, who chuckled blackly. The masked man rubbed his thumb and forefingers together in the universal sign of payment expected.

I shook uncontrollably. Sheik's sure fingertips pressed into the flesh of my shoulder.

Vaati – that steely, besuited shadow of a man – held his palms together as if in triumphant benediction. He spoke with the false cheer of a tour guide. With a voice like oil and cigar smoke, Vaati purred, "We like to think of ourselves as 'Player Characters,' Mister Olsen. The new gods of this imaginary little world.

"Now that the cat's out of the proverbial bag, I suppose that a proper introduction is in order. My name is Irvine Latigo. Formerly of Long Beach, California. Formerly Vice President of Strategic Acquisitions for Hellstromme Industries. Now I serve a greater master. I am known as both _Vaati_ and the _Voice of Ganon_. My word is his."

For the first time in some minutes, the Iron Knuckle spoke. She rumbled, "You're right, Linus. We're closer cousins to you than any of these Hylian freaks. We're practically family. The only people from the ol' blue marble to survive – and thrive – in this idiotic cesspit."

The corpselike man identified as "Stalfos" muttered something indecipherable. His black, seething eyes scanned the roiling water of the river as if he were searching for something important. Though the rest of the Inner Council stopped to listen to his incomprehensible rambling, I could make out none of it. His words were rasping, painful whispers. Fungus-colored lips poured them forth like the word salad of an incarcerated madman.

"Got that right," Armos eventually said, nodding. Whatever it was that the skeletal guy in the duster had said, the masked man agreed vehemently.

"_Of course we're from Earth_!" Vaati – a.k.a. Irvine Latigo – suddenly shouted. "Did you really think these fucking _savages _could organize themselves this well? Did you really believe that all this just happened on its own?"

He hissed, "Ganon recruited us from the one place where the legends of the Triforce were just that – _stories_. We five were the ideal candidates to gather his forces and spread his gospel. Who better than unbelievers to conquer such a devout people as Hyrule? We all know exactly where Hyrule comes from and where it's going. In addition to our, ah, _unique _skill-sets, every one of us knows the truth behind the lie – that this place is a _plaything_. A fictional world full of illusory people. A game – through which we may stride like the titans of old."

"What . . . what is he speaking of?" Sheik murmured hoarsely.

Latigo continued, "Our number hails from across the breadth of the globe. Gerard's a Limey, of course. And I understand that Kenji there is originally from Okinawa. Both Iron Knuckle and I have a . . . _complicated_ ancestry. And God only knows where Armos is from originally – though he's plenty famous in your old neck of the woods."

"You . . . you followed me before I came here. You tracked me . . . and threatened me," I said, gaze drifting to Armos's featureless face. Within his mask's eye-holes, distant orbs shone like dark ponds.

Latigo said smoothly, "Come now, Mister Olsen. It's your destiny to come into conflict with out employer. You don't think that we wouldn't develop a bit of a vested interest in you, do you?"

"Bastard," I muttered, on the verge of tears. The thought of these _creatures _out on the streets of Los Angeles made me feel nauseous. "Bastard bastard bastard. Fucking bastards!" When I thought about them stalking my friends and loved ones, every fiber of my heart felt like it would explode.

Armos muttered, "Tch. What a fucking punk! You should have let me kill him when I had the chance."

"Simmer down, 'Bishop.' You'll have your turn. We all will," Latigo snapped.

Like a distant chorus, the Iron Knuckle called, "Exactly. Back off, you pathetic creeper. There're plenty of other corpses to fuck tonight."

The masked man tittered, "Oh, but I want _this one_. I want to cut out his guts, Knuckle. I want him to see his own liver in my hand. I owe him that much. And I want it now!"

"Jesus, man! Puttin' it on a bit thick, don't you think?" Darknut laughed.

"Enough, all of you!" Irvine Latigo barked. "I didn't call you here for a chucklefest. We're still on the clock, so to speak."

Suddenly all business, Latigo spun on his heel and called out to the Iron Knuckle: "We're done here, Mayda. The order has been given to fall back."

A beat of wind-swept silence. "_Fall back_?" the Iron Knuckle snarled. "Retreat? Hell! We're _slaughtering _them, Irvine! I could end this all myself. Just give me a few of Gerard's men and I'll –"

Latigo grimaced. "_Enough_," he snapped. "These orders come from the G-Man himself. He thinks that they've had enough."

"This ain't any kind o' sport, Bright-Eyes." Darknut said. He ashed his cigarette with a disdainful flick of the wrist. His silent mount was so still it might as well have been stuffed. "Might as well get on with the rest of the plan."

A roar like a maddened beast echoed from the Iron Knuckle's helmet. "We could stand atop the ruins of Harkinian Keep _tomorrow _if we press forward! With the seat of the royal family in our hands, we could break their spirits with a gesture."

Darknut scoffed, words rising on a twisting plume of ash. "And risk all their legions on the Faron Line turnin' around to chop us up? We ain't _that _well off, girl. We got what we came for. They'll be shittin' themselves stupid every time we even sneeze in their direction for the next few months."

As they argued, Sheik quietly stammered, "Linus . . . _please_. At the very least pick up your sword . . ."

But it's so far away! I wanted to mewl. It was probably no more than a foot from my body, submerged in water that couldn't be more than three or four inches deep.

Voice like a band-saw, Armos chattered, "You heard the man, Mayda – we got plenty o' opportunities coming our way. All the time in the world to play. Orders is orders. Even you have to play by the rules."

"But –!" the Iron Knuckle chuffed.

Latigo grimaced. His entire face transformed into a constricted mass of rage-lines. He shouted, "But nothing! You've had your fun, Knuckle. Now pack it in and prepare to leave. Lord Ganon commands it."

Sheik was right. Now was the time to act. As the Inner Council bickered, I realized that I had no better opportunity. No other would present itself. I needed to act. I needed to just . . . to just be able to _move_. All I had to do was _reach_. The Master Sword shone like salvation in the cool shallows of the Kerneghi.

I stretched out my right hand.

It took every memory – ever moment – every molecule of strength I had accumulated throughout my life. My torso felt like a crumbling concrete statue. My arm was a pylon scabbed with rust. Every joint squealed and shuddered.

A sinuous sluicing sound as something silver hauled up out of the river. The Master Sword rose into view. Had I really done that? Was I . . .?

Yes. I had! My fingers curled tight and bloodless about the blue steel of the sword's pommel.

From another world entirely, a flat voice cooed, "This is where it all gets interesting, isn't it? The point we've all been fuckin' waiting for. And what a night to kick it all off, huh?"

Now: Stand.

Too much. It's too much.

At my side, Sheik whispered something. His rich voice rolled with fear and revulsion. I understood nothing. All I knew was the full, breathless pain in my back and arm.

Do it, the Other Me moaned. It's the only thing you have left. All you can do now is make one last stand.

Elsewhere, someone said, "Oh, yes. And now we need only show off our prize."

I directed every last neuron-worth of my shrinking senses down into my numbed legs. I felt fibers of muscle twitch and spark with a kind of necromantic life. My knees pressed hard into the river mud. My eyes clasped shut and tears squeezed from their edges. Salt and iron sat heavy on my tongue.

Wrenching; groaning; flexing; stretching; creaking; snapping. Every twist of muscle below my waist convulsed and screamed. Breaking, cracking, crumbling – I stood. It was so painful that I cried out. All voices stopped their senseless jabbering.

Oh! It hurt so badly. And yet, as I tottered to my feet – dripping, the Master Sword held limply in one hand –I suddenly felt better than I had in the entirety of my life. I opened my eyes to a wide painting of stunned and incredulous faces.

"We got a live one!" Darknut smiled. His cigarette glowed with an amazed inhalation.

Close at hand, Sheik muttered, "Can you move? We must –"

I ignored him. Instead, I crowed, "Come on! I'll take all y'all bitches on!"

Laughter rose from the Inner Council – these men of Earth come to Hyrule to make war. Snickers and snorts and guffaws. Even the shriveled, grotesque ribs of Stalfos (_Kenji_, apparently) shuddered with sandpaper giggles. Only the Iron Knuckle stood at the periphery peevishly, looking as if she suddenly had no idea what to do with the giant sword still perched in one hand.

Still chuckling, Irvine Latigo leaned forward. He spoke as one might when addressing a daydreaming child. "Linus man, you couldn't even make a dent in _one _of us. Granted, my dear sister is a bit of a brick shithouse – after all, being Ganon's chief enforcer has its perks. That said, all of us have been given gifts by our great lord. Not even that long-eared pal of yours could touch us. You wouldn't have a fart's chance in a windstorm."

I panted, "Doesn't . . . matter. So long as you continue to oppress Hyrule and I've, I, I . . ." My vision swam. Both knees threatened to buckle. I said, "So long as I've got breath in my body . . . I'll oppose you."

Another gale of laughter answered my declaration.

"Dude's taking this fucking serious!" Armos said, his heavy chest twitching with breathless chortles. "I love it!"

"I mean . . . every fucking word," I breathed.

"Well then. Let's test that theory!" the masked man erupted.

No other members of the Inner Council had even a moment to react. Armos crouched, earthen tabards flapping with the movement. I heard: _a splintering branch_. I felt: _like I was teetering over the side of a building. _I smelled: _peeling rubber on a scorching afternoon_.

And he vanished.

I blinked gelidly. No more than three seconds passed. And then –

[_Ozone; static electricity; acceleration._]

– Armos reappeared. He dashed no more than a yard away from me. His long legs propelled him through the water with monstrous strides. Deep in his mask, mad eyes spun delightedly.

"Boo!"

A huge, heavy cleaver swung in Armos's gloved fist. The sort of instrument one might use to crack beef bones in half. It approached without hesitation or mercy.

I didn't even have time to feel afraid. I sensed Sheik coiling down – attempting fruitlessly to deflect the oncoming attack. Even he was too slow. The masked man's cleaver was a deadly whirlwind.

[_Not like this!_]

With a jolt of agony, I threw up my right arm. The Master Sword flew like a prayer delivered.

Every bone and organ vibrated with the impact. A cry of distressed steel. I smelled hot blood and realized amid my agony that the wound on my left arm had begun to seep once more.

In less than an instant, that last muster of strength became a sadistic illusion. The blow knocked me back and stole all the power from my legs. I fell – but not far. Strong hands were there in a flash. Sheik caught me, slipping a rough hand beneath my arm.

Out in the firelight, Armos spun and planted a heel between the river rocks. He sputtered in frustration, "How the _fuck_ did you block that?" His entire body shook with wild anger.

Armos's mud-red mask seemed to hover in the gloom-glow. His unkempt brown hair blew and flailed in the wind. From behind the featureless curvature of his false face, Armos growled, "No matter. Took the wind out of your sails, huh? Aw. Look at you. You ain't so tough. I think you got glass bones, nerdlinger. I think you got shit for brains and sand for balls. Next time I come at you, I guarantee you fold like a card table."

Among the startled faces of the Inner Council, the Iron Knuckle had roused from her previous apathy. I watched as she took a tentative step in our direction, only to hesitate. Uncharacteristic. Her armor vibrated with some untappable energy.

Irvine Latigo called out tiredly, "Enough of that, Bishop. Hit the brakes, man. They get the idea."

The masked man straightened. He chuffed and cocked his head to examine me one last time. At my shoulder, Sheik snarled, "Know this, dog of Ganon: Had I my blade, I would end you this night!"

"Right. Just keep on tellin' yourself that, sugar-tits," Armos muttered. "Looks like you two queers get a reprieve tonight. I'll be seein' ya'."

Accompanied by that confusing mélange of shifting sensation (_cigarettes; falling_; _scissor-cuts_), the masked man disappeared between breaths. There was no flash – no puff of smoke. He was there one nanosecond, and gone in the next. After a period of no more than a few heartbeats, Armos stood with arms crossed, shoulder to shoulder with his fellows of the Council.

Latigo gazed at the man remonstratively. He warned, "If you do anything like that again, I'll see to it that Ganon personally flays the flesh off your hands. Am I understood?"

"As you wish, Mein Fuhrer. I only wanted to show the little shit who's really in charge around here."

Come on, Linus. Stand back up. You did it before.

[_But I can't!_]

I wanted to sob, but had apparently already burned through my entire supply of tears. I couldn't even hold myself upright. Sheik was all that was keeping me from dropping back into the water. Sheik's sure hand gently took the Master Sword from my fingers. He slipped the destined blade beneath the folds of his cloak.

"Do not fear," he whispered. "There is hope yet." He moved so that I could lean more comfortably against his muscular shoulder. "Our time is now."

Unseen by me, the Iron Knuckle sniped, "Yeah. Big man. Beating up someone who's mostly dead. Heh – at least he's blonde. Your type, right?"

"Say that to my face, you –" Armos snapped.

Even the base theatrics of the Inner Council's squabbling couldn't distract them from Sheik's preparations for departure. A predatory grin slid back onto Irvine Latigo's face. He offered us his palms and chuckled warmly.

"Guys! Guys. Let's take it down a bit. No need to leave just yet. Our surprise guest has yet to arrive! I'm sure you'll be excited to finally meet him."

"What are they talking about now?" Sheik asked. I only shook my head. Despair prowled about my mind like a slathering beast.

"You really do want to settle down for this one," Latigo continued jocularly. "It's the entire reason why you're here tonight, actually. Why _all of us _are here. Did you think that Lord Ganon would simply sit this one out? Did you think that he would only send his servants to meet his great and ancient rival? Of course not. Haha. It would only follow that – ah. Ah! I feel it now."

Latigo twisted about and gazed up at to the western slope, where great sheer bluffs of granite jutted like castle walls. About his head were haloed dust and smoke and stars.

"There!" the man in the suit whispered ecstatically. "_There_!"

The other members of the Inner Council turned smoothly to face west. Beside me, I heard Sheik's breath hitch, pause, and then continue in shallow, sticky gasps.

Every living eye traced upward. Across the scrub bushes and singed tree limbs. Past the overhangs of lichen-smeared stone. Patches of orange firelight scuttled across the cliffs.

A black titan stood atop the rock face.

It moved across the stone with sure, unhurried, earth-rattling footsteps. Caught between star-filled sky and the burning pit of Kerneghi Gorge, it stood as if in conquest of some formless, limbo frontier.

At this distance, it was impossible to properly judge just how tall the figure actually was. Eight – nine – perhaps even ten feet from the tread of its cyclopean boots to the crown of its darkling helm. Numbers didn't really matter. All I knew was that the creature was a literal giant – too tall and wide-shouldered and heavy of foot to be remotely human.

The armor it wore was so dark that it was like the void of space hammered into plates. Across the black suit glimmered jagged designs of gold, indigo, and bloody coral. Its gargantuan gauntlets bore only three fingers apiece. Bronze spikes rose from the half-spheres of its shoulder-plates.

At first, I couldn't identify the long, palely shimmering object the creature held in one hand. When I figured out that it was a trident almost as tall as a telephone pole, I felt a fear as old as childhood.

Above a gold-studded gorget, none of the creature's features were visible. It wore a matte-black great-helm, forged in an angular-but-effective likeness of a snarling boar. Though the monstrous visage was composed of heavy angles, it was detailed to the point of evocation. The beast's bared teeth, black jowls, heavy brow, and sharp ears were fake only in composition – I felt as if the helmet itself could have been the giant's true face. A pair of tusks extended from the boar's curling, graven lips. Each one was easily the length of a cavalry saber. That they were worn with age and fully organic was undeniable.

Herein was the worst part: The tusks jutted from _within _the helmet – as if they were attached to whoever lay within.

You know who, Linus. I swallowed nothing but the scraping ghosts of drifting embers. It was all I could do to keep myself conscious.

It gazed down upon us with empty eyes, glowing white and pitiless as burning phosphorous. Within the raw iron of its helm, no sign of life moved but for the flicker of that distant, deathly fire.

An infernal figure in every sense of the word.

"Hail the coming of The Old Darkness! Our Savior in Chaos!" Latigo cried.

All the voices of the High Ministers rose in response:

"HAIL GANON!"

I whispered, "No. God. Not now."

Sheik squeezed my shoulder encouragingly, but all the strength seemed to have drained from his fingers. When I glanced his way, I saw that his ruby eyes were so wide that they threatened to tumble from their sockets.

Every member of the Inner Council save Darknut fell to his or her knee in homage. The dark knight atop his horse merely bowed in the saddle, eyes closed, cigarette dangling from his lips like a censer. His mount snorted contemptuously – the first sound the smoky horse had made since it had arrived.

Ganon – the Old Darkness – Cursed of the Goddesses – the Lord and High General of the Protectorate – the eternal enemy of the Hero of the Triforce. He drew toward the edge of the granite bluff. At his approach the ambient vapors of the night danced and swirled into abhorrent geometries. His massive, armored bulk bent over the cliff.

A pale, unpleasant glow seeped from between the plates of Ganon's armor. Its exact color and radiance coruscated as if from an uneven magnesium torch. When a ray of it touched my eyes, I flinched back as if I had just been caressed by the moldy contours of a dead man's hand.

Far below the giant's greaves, the face of the waters seethed like an expanse of dark matter given form and purpose. Wind howled maddeningly through the remains of the gorge's trees. All the hands of the battle's dead seemed to stretch and clutch hopelessly at the shadow of the ascendant dark lord.

Ganon spoke with a voice like a kettle drum. It boomed atonally through the valley – over every surface and against every brow. A voice as powerful and emotionless as thunder.

"GREETINGS. OUTERLANDER. AT LAST, OUR DESTINIES. COMBINE. AT LAST WE GLIMPSE. THEIR TRUE SHAPES."

His was a halting, uneven cadence. The tones of a demigod married to the breathless, stuttering delivery of a clinical asthmatic. Between each stunted semi-sentence, I could hear inhalations like the pumping of a titanic engine.

Silence opened like an empty grave. It took me an unknown quantity of seconds to figure out that this terrible apparition was waiting for me to speak. Even Sheik seemed to be holding his breath.

I fought nausea, terror, delirium, and the slippery sense that I was falling backward from a great height. All to manage: "I've . . . got nothin' . . . to say to you . . . you. You're a joke."

Ganon twisted and leaned atop the precipice, his armor grinding audibly. The chuckle that rumbled from the depths of his helm was flat and dead as a moonscape.

"I COULD CRUSH YOU. LIKE AN ANT. YOU ARE EVER. AT. MY MERCY."

The great trident jabbed in my direction, white as frozen lightning.

"YOU WILL BOW BEFORE ME. OUTERLANDER. YOU WILL. BOW. AT MY FEET. YOU SHALL BE. MY SLAVE."

"That's all you got? I . . . man. I thought you'd be more . . . than this. If _you're _all I have to defeat . . ." I gasped, ". . . then this is gonna be . . . the easiest heroic destiny _ever_."

Yellowed, elephantine tusks bobbed with Ganon's toneless laughter.

"YOU REMAIN. DEFIANT! VERY GOOD. I EXPECTED. NOTHING LESS."

What unnerved me more than anything – more than Ganon's monstrous height or his pale trident or the atmosphere of distilled dread that followed his steps – was that none of the Inner Council moved or spoke. Their previously rowdy demeanor had drained away into a quiet so profound that it could only stem from respect. An undying loyalty.

Sheik prodded me listlessly. Dude, cut me some slack.

I hissed, "What the fuck are you, really? Why don't you just show us all what's . . ." I coughed and detected a coppery aftertaste. "Show us . . . what's under that helmet of yours."

The Old Darkness's spiked shoulder-plates twitched and shuddered – whether from pleasure or annoyance, I could not remotely fathom. The figure pronounced, "KNOW, OUTERLANDER. THAT I AM OLD AS CREATION. MY HATRED. _SHAPED_ THIS WORLD. IN MY SHADOW GROW. FIELDS OF BONE. AND FLOW RIVERS. OF BLOOD." The harsh starglow of his eyes – or rather, the lack thereof – burned very bright.

"I AM THE GODDESSES'. ULTIMATE FAILURE. I SEEK TO CORRECT. THE HYPOCRISY. OF LIFE!

"YOU AND. ALL OF YOUR FOREBEARERS. ARE ALL THAT. HAVE EVER STOOD IN MY PATH. THIS TIME. I WILL NOT ATTEMPT TO CRUSH YOU. I NEED ONLY. TO BEND YOU TO MY TRUTH. I MUST BIND YOU. TO MY WILL. AND SERVICE."

Mustering what was perhaps the last of my energy, I said, "What now, then? Are you fuckers gonna . . . drop the hammer? Or am I?"

At last a sound emanated from the gathered Councilmen: A half-suppressed snicker rose from the twitching form of Armos. Bishop Armos. Bishop.

_The _Bishop?

In my dementia, _that_ gave me pause.

"NOW?" Ganon boomed. "NOW THE PIECES. ARE SET. NOW THE GREAT STRUGGLE. CAN TRULY BEGIN. I WANT YOU TO BE. _STRONG_. WHEN I BREAK YOU. I WANT ALL THE WORLD TO BE. BETTER THAN IT IS. ONLY THEN. WILL I SMASH YOUR. HOPES. DREAMS. LOVE. JOY. ALL THINGS. YOU WILL CURSE YOUR. GODDESSES' NAMES!

"NOW? I LEAVE YOU. TO PREPARE. KNOW NOW THAT YOU CANNOT. PREVAIL. NOT THIS TIME. SOON I WILL SEE YOU CHAINED. AT MY SIDE."

Abruptly, Irvine Latigo rose from his crouch. He spun about with an expression of dead-eyed bliss. He shouted, "Flee, then! Tell your masters that the sons of Earth have come for their country! All will burn before the might of Ganon and his Protectorate. The children of another world will set foot upon your homelands and drink the blood of your entire race!"

"INDEED. DEAR VAATI. INDEED," the armored giant crooned. Like a roving mountain of dark steel, Ganon turned on and lumbered methodically away from the bluff's edge. He turned the porcine outline of his helm back in my direction. His tusks were silhouetted like twin chasms, cutting apart the stars. "WE WILL MEET AGAIN. OUTERLANDER. SOONER. THAN YOU THINK."

His departure was like watching the retreat of some great thunderhead. A dark outline laden with fell meaning, sinking painfully over the horizon. Flashes of eye-searing light flickered between the plates of his armor. Each boot-step a booming peel. And then he was gone – as abruptly and mysteriously as the Old Darkness had arrived. For a moment, I wondered whether the entire episode had simply been a pain-induced nightmare.

The High Ministers rose slowly, like sleepers awakening at the end of a long journey. Darknut blinked heavily and sighed, "That's it, eh?" He examined his smoke, grimaced, and flicked its vaporous butt out into the river.

"Yeah," Armos chuffed. "Crying goddamn shame."

Stalfos swayed drunkenly. A diseased rictus had spread across his features. I felt an acute repulsion as I realized that the expression was actually a smile.

"Come, gentlemen. Our hour is past. Time to pack our instruments and strike the stage," Latigo announced.

The Iron Knuckle had receded into shadow. Her form was phantasmal and uncertain. Once more she may as well have been a particularly grim sculpture, left in the river as if in warning.

"You're just . . . leaving us?" I asked. I couldn't tell if my astonishment was genuine or a byproduct of physical shock. "Bullshit. There's gotta be a catch."

"Certainly," Latigo smirked. "And that price is this:

"Tonight, we won. You know that we did. No matter how hard you struggled . . . no matter how 'valiantly' you fought . . . you failed. This is your moment of disgrace, Olsen. A moment that's going to gnaw at you for the rest of your pathetic, benighted life. When we next meet, I want to see just how big a hole this night has chewed in you. Why, I'm hoping that it'll be sweet enough that I'll have to take a picture."

"All this . . ." My eyes roved bloodlessly over the devastation smoldering throughout the valley. "All this was just to fuck with me?"

"Sure," Latigo hummed. At last, actual pleasure stole into his features. It produced a wave of rippling tics that crossed his smile like live things. "Why not?"

His all-too-human eyes scanned Sheik and I as if we were guests in need of ejection from a party run too late. He made a brusque shooing motion. "Now: Scamper along, children. It's far past your bedtime."

All of a sudden, the Shiekah's grip tightened on my shoulder. "Linus: If you can still hear me, _we are leaving_. Know that I have to carry you now. This will likely cause you great pain. "

As the Inner Council watched bemusedly, Sheik hauled me up with all his might. With a grunt and a harried wheeze, the Shiekah pulled my damp body into a fireman's carry.

He was right: It _did _cause great pain. It felt as if my left arm was about to rip apart all over again. My ribs pounded with a cracked fury. I screamed uselessly and felt all the more a fool when my cry was answered by a burst of mocking laughter. Apparently this was quite the show for the Inner Council. Fuck all of them.

All the colors and sounds of the night lost clarity. My mind wheeled over an abyssal precipice.

Sheik pulled me tight to him. The heat of his body became a very close thing. I could smell the blood and dust caked into his wrappings. I tried not to whimper when the Shiekah said, "Hold tight."

In the hazy outer reaches of the darkness, a pair of bright amber eyes stared from within the outline of a great-helm. They bored into me with an implacable, lupine focus. In the burning coal of their depths I saw something as intangible as it was absolutely certain. They radiated an unspoken promise.

And then even those were gone. All at once we were in motion. A confusing rush of shadow and flame. At Sheik's back there flew brays of laughter like a chorus of imps.

Irvine Latigo's voice dogged us even in our flight. "Run now, children! Run along! And don't forget to say your prayers!"

There was no time to feel helpless. No time to mull over what the fuck had just happened. A body full of battered shards of pure agony had begun to fail. I had held out much longer than I should have.

All time was suddenly elastic. I heard each of Sheik's footfalls like distant explosions. His heart was a tumbling drum. It struck me that he must be very strong to carry me with such ease – even though his breath came thick and labored. Each exhalation moved clothward into my ears. They grew hot and tired.

I couldn't feel the fingers on either of my hands. Every breath I took was laced with dry razors. I saw little but the dark outlines of trees and rocks and broken things like scarecrows.

Oh, I thought. Man. I'm kinda . . . kinda fuckin' . . . _dying_ here, I think.

My face rolled upward. Sheik loomed into the sky, tall as a god, his dark red eyes like fierce alien suns. Across my vision, a thicker, creamier darkness was falling. Everything shimmered through a fine, gauzy mist of charcoal and navy. Beyond this blue frontier, stars were crowned about the waning dome of the moon.

"You cannot die." Sheik's voice spanned the world. "Do not die, damn you! Stay strong! If you die, all of this is for nothing!"

I'm trying, I thought miserably. It's just so . . . _hard_.

My eyelids fluttered like the wings of a panicked moth. All weight and consequence slid from my shoulders. Sheik said something that I didn't understand. I opened my mouth to thank him – to tell him how much I was in his debt and how deeply I admired him at that moment. I wanted to tell him that I was going to sit down and buy him a beer.

No words emerged from my cracked lips. A veil of senseless void-stuff fell across all things. Sheik vanished behind its numb curtain.

After that: Nothing. Not even glimpses of the receding world. Just darkness.

I seem to remember there being rain. That doesn't seem likely, though. There wasn't a cloud in the sky.


	47. 47

**47**

I woke.

Pale, wavering sunlight fell across my face. Slimy heat pressed against my body. Damp cloth clung to my skin like an unearthed funeral suit. I sat up.

Across the room, a television screen stared back at me like the bulbous, red-tinged eye of a cyclops. The cabinet that it brooded upon reared like a dust-addled monolith. About both were clustered shadows deep as graves.

It came to me slowly that I lay atop the bunched and gritty covers of a musty-smelling bed. My fingers curled into fists, bunching mute handfuls of fabric against my clammy skin.

Distantly, I heard sounds like the growls of nameless animals. A clangorous dragging of chains. The over-familiar cough of internal combustion.

In the high white ceiling there thrummed a noise like the far-off workings of a blast furnace. A low, clattering rumble that I felt in the flesh of my toes.

"No," I whispered. When I spoke, it felt like I had swallowed ground glass.

Everything hurt. Not just my body – the entire _world _seemed to pulse with a slow, bloodless agony. A thin whine played through my ears. Every breath I took shuddered against ribs like shattered ceramic.

There was a greasy-sweet taste in my mouth like someone had dripped a dollop of raspberry jam into a pan of bacon fat – and then left the concoction on a counter for a week. My lips were cracked. My throat was so dry it ached.

A dusty effluence swam through the air, as if I lay in the core of a long-sealed tomb. All was steeped in an atmosphere of fetid heat and grim abandonment. The television screen gazed out as if in idiot judgment.

Oh God. Oh God. Oh fucking God.

It was a weird, sepulchral place – though not unfamiliar. Of course it wasn't. After all, it _was _my own bedroom. My own bedroom . . . in my own apartment . . . in Los Angeles. On Earth.

This wasn't happening. It couldn't be happening. Not after everything. Not after all that time.

When I sprang from my bed it was with sensation that all my bones had turned to tin. A vibrating, acheful weakness. Carpet fibers scraped against my bare feet like a bed of electric needles. As I took a step, my toes kicked up tiny puffs of chalky dust.

Beyond the shuttered blinds of the bedroom window, the failing light deepened into umber-tinged fire. The door to my room was closed. Only darkness crawled under the jamb. I thought I heard a whisper of movement somewhere behind it – a presence shuffling down the inner hall.

I reached for the doorknob. Beneath my shaking palm, its brass was cold as hoarfrost. In its turn was the squeal of broken machines long left rusting. The hallway yawned in somber twilight. Across its span, the bathroom door opened upon fixtures alien as crouching homunculi. The mere sight of a toilet wrenched my heart and bowels.

Nothing moved. No one stirred. There was a sour heaviness in the air – a peculiar sense of recent occupation. That unnamable feeling of someone else reacting imperceptibly to one's presence.

"Hello?" I called. Well – _attempted _to call. What my shriveled lips and parched tongue produced was more like the squeal of a starving baby bird. I stumbled from my bedroom and attempted the greeting again. There was no answer.

The hallway seemed to cant at a funhouse angle. There was a pounding in my head like someone had attempted to drive nails through my skull as I slept. When I settled a palm against the wall in an attempt to steady myself, the plaster felt warm and clammy.

"Hello? Is anyone there?" I rasped.

The apartment hall felt bulged, warped, fly-blown. From the indistinct cavern of the living room there rose an indistinct glow.

It took all my effort to shuffle-slide my way into the stifling chamber of the living room. All the light-bulbs in the apartment were off. As I approached, that uneven flickering expanded into a series of colored bursts, painting the ceiling and walls. With this new resolution of light and color floated a glorious, familiar, heavenly scent:

Marijuana.

Beloved weed – piney, sticky, carbon-edged, hoppy, slightly sour, intensely organic, redolent of memory. I saw now that swirling eddies of ghostly vapor danced through the coruscating light.

I let loose an agonized laugh and scrambled like a broken doll into the living room. To my right the kitchenette sat dim and dingy as a forgotten woodshed. Before me, copper bands of light spilled between drawn window-shades. The wonderful, welcoming white bulk of the couch loomed like a hedgerow. At last I recognized the source of that strange, oscillating light: in the gloomy confines of the living room, the television played silently. In the upper left corner of the screen sat the word MUTE.

Two heads protruded over the top of the couch cushions. Two sets of dark hair – one in a bushy snarl, the other recently trimmed to an almost military shortness.

"The conquering hero awakes!" a deep voice called out cheerfully.

Stuart Ramirez and Allen Eklund turned their heads to gaze upon my approach. Their faces were pale, wan, and sweat-damp. Stuart's grin was explosive.

I couldn't help it: "Holy shit," I muttered. "Holy shit. Holy shit _holy shit_."

Allen absently pressed the black frame of his glasses up his nose. "I suppose it _is _pretty rad, huh?" he smiled.

I leaned into the warmish wall and stared at my two roommates, flabbergasted.

"I can't believe this is happening," I whimpered. "How am I here? How am I back?"

The television displayed an image of soldiers strolling anxiously in front of burning storefronts. As before, it looked like Stuart and Allen were watching CNN with the sound off.

Stew shrugged. "Man, who knows? You just, like, _showed up_. Out of nowhere. Dropped in a heap on the front step without a word. And here we were thinking that you wouldn't ever come back. I was worried you'd skipped out on the lease, man." A meaty paw – bruised along the knuckles – flipped up as if in a half-hearted greeting. "But here you are! You look like shit, dude – but at least you're _home_."

Onscreen, a clean-cut cable television drone held his script in a death-grip. His eyes were haunted. Stage makeup was not enough to hide the scrape on his chin.

"I don't get it," I felt myself saying. I blinked eyelids that seemed to be made of petrified wood. I sniffed and detected other smells than the omnipresent ganja-scent. Rotten garbage. Mildew. That caked-in, sharp smell of raw dirt. And something . . . something else. Something at once very familiar and utterly unidentifiable. "You didn't . . . you didn't see me? Didn't see how I came here?"

Allen laughed. Stuart's huge shoulders undulated above the cushions in an exaggerated shrug.

"We had other shit to worry about, man," Stuart said tiredly.

Allen nodded vigorously. "You know."

My eyes flicked to CNN's mechanical-looking anchor. There was a picture-within-picture image playing next to the man's blanched face: A square of blurry footage depicting what appeared to be a foreign city with tight, cobbled streets. A gray film smeared across the camera lens. Smoke and ash whirled through the air. Flames towered from high, distant buildings.

"You must have gone on quite a bender, man." Stuart's voice sounded like it was warbling from a distant room.

Without thinking, my gaze had drifted down the television to that ever-reliable announcer: the CNN news ticker. All the news reduced to a few pithy headlines. The words that scrolled like a forced march across the bottom of the television were pus-yellow.

MILLIONS DEAD, announced the news scroll. ENDLESS HORDE AFFLICTS EASTERN SEABOARD.

Allen suddenly tittered. There was a desperate, exhausted edge to his voice. He said, "That's a bit of an understatement, Stew. 'Quite a bender' ain't the fucking half of it, is it?"

My entire body had gone rigid. I shook my head determinedly. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't blink. Surely I had read the headline wrong. Surely I was only seeing things. After all, the last thing I remembered was passing out from pain and shock.

So, ignoring my roommates, I focused on the scrolling yellow words on the television. I read: FEMA EXPANDS ZONE OF EVACUATION. And then: RUSSIAN PM PUTIN DECLARES MARTIAL LAW. And then: POPE URGES CALM, PRAYER.

"What the fuck?" I whispered.

Nonplussed, Stuart and Allen glanced back at the screen. Atop the doom-laden news crawl, tears were running down the news anchor's sallow cheeks. When they turned back, it was with expressions that were simultaneously amused and blasé.

"Aw man," Stuart grinned. "Don't act like you don't know. Come on." He actually winked, as if we shared a common secret.

My heart was a fireball. My testicles were twin glaciers.

Onscreen, the feed cut abruptly away from the newscaster. In his place was a trembling shot of unfocused, spindly shapes racing in a great herd down a country highway. Before this oncoming wave stood dozens of police cruisers, dome lights ablaze and deputies folded over their hoods with shotguns.

NASA OFFICIALS REASSURE PUBLIC THAT THE DISAPPEARANCE OF STARS IS NO CAUSE FOR ALARM, declared the news scroll.

Blink. Blink, goddamn you Linus just _blink_.

"You look a little tense, man," Allen said flatly.

"Absolutely," Stuart nodded. "Like you're in a bit of pain. You okay?"

"I . . . I . . . I'm really confused right now . . ." I stammered.

Allen's skin was pallid in the dead pulse of the television's glow. He revealed brownish teeth and crooned, "Sounds like you need a little inhalable wisdom, my man. After all . . ." his joyless grin vanished in an instant, ". . . we got a lot to talk about. Stuart – get the man a hit of the good stuff."

Stew let loose a snorting chortle and ducked beneath the edge of the couch. There was a scrabbling, scurrying sound. Allen regarded me clinically. Over his thin shoulders a different newscaster mouthed her words slowly, methodically. Her pantsuit was rumpled and flecked with mud. I caught a whiff of sulfur.

The news ticker declared: BONES OF TITANS RISE FROM THE SEA.

I could barely breathe.

Stuart Ramirez emerged from behind the white wall of the couch with a triumphant smile. A huge hand rose beside his face. In his white-knuckled grasp was an old, cracked-looking bong of translucent red glass. A liquid darker and thicker than mere water slurped about its inner chamber. Niter-like white patches rimmed its mouth. Its stem and bowl were caked with a tarry ooze too shiny and gelatinous to be mere resin. The bowl was packed tight with a vaguely smoking chunk of what might have been weed, but looked more like quivering cave moss.

"Here. The first hit's the best. It'll put all of this in perspective. You'll feel like a million goddamn dollars afterward, man. You'll understand what all this really means," Stuart said encouragingly.

My lungs seized and my stomach rebelled. Nausea like a dreadnaught cored through my body, bending me near-double.

Allen growled, "Smoke the fucking bowl, Linus. You want answers? You'll have all the answers in the world."

Gasping, I asked, "What . . . what's in it? That doesn't look kosher."

"Does it fucking matter?"

Oh Jesus. Oh fuck. What the hell was going on? A tremor moved through the floor. The apartment walls shook and car alarms brayed with panic in a far-off country.

"We know all about where you've been, Linus," Allen said darkly. "We know all about what you've done. Everyone does. _Everywhere_. It's all the rage these days. Stew and I had a front row seat, so to speak. We know how you did over there. Frankly, we're a bit disappointed. But it's okay."

A red bubble expanded from Allen's right nostril. It shimmered a moment in the pulsing TV-glow. Then it popped with a tiny _bloop _and a thin streamer of blood coursed over his lips and onto his chin. Droplets began to plink onto the carpet.

Stuart cackled like a rabid hyena. He jabbed the rank bong in my direction and gabbled, "Do it dude just do it yeah _do it_."

And the news ticker announced: THE OLD DARKNESS STANDS TRIUMPHANT OVER THE CORPSE OF ALL WORLDS.

I shrank back. My body folded against the wall. Old Friend Panic had descended wispily to knead my shoulders. "What the hell is going on?" I whimpered.

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Allen snarled. Tiny globes of blood and spittle ejected from his lips. "Stew – just hand it to the man."

YOUR FAILURE SKINS TEN-THOUSAND TIMES ITS NUMBER.

With all the grace of a mythic creature emerging from a bog, Stuart Ramirez stood from the couch. Six feet and six inches of pale, flabby stoner. He held the vile pipe out like a holy relic. A dusty waft of base stench accompanied him.

I screamed.

Before my eyes, everything below Stuart's shoulders was coming apart. What remained of his clothes hung shredded and stiff with putrefaction. His skin was bruised and mottled as an old banana. Grayish ribs outlined an abdominal cavity dripping with dark green fluid. The intestines that poured out of his open belly were rotten and black. An indescribable smell of gangrenous flesh, warm garbage, maggots, and disease-ridden shit choked the air.

The smoke-colored sacks of his lungs twitched and contracted as he spoke. Stuart rumbled, "Have some! Join the party!"

The newscaster was screaming silently. Her mouth was very wide. Behind her, the CNN studio filled with fog and flame. Something with legs like stilts and arms like spears stalked faceless into the picture. The feed to the news studio bluntly stopped, replaced with live footage shot within a green-lit corridor. Whoever held the camera was running for their life.

ALL SIN WILL FIND YOU OUT.

My terror was an abominable paralysis. I could only watch unblinking as the decaying thing that had once been Stuart Ramirez shuffled brokenly around the side of the couch. Beside him, Allen Eklund rose like a wraith from where he had perched. Blood streamed in twin red creeks from his nostrils. As he stood rickety and near-boneless in the insufferable stink and heat, the edges of his brown eyes began to leak their own streams of scarlet.

Oh God, I thought. I'm dead, aren't I? I died out there. This is Hell.

"Hail Ganon, you dumb fucker," the shade of Allen croaked. Blood – thick and gelatinous as syrup – burbled up out of his throat. He too began stumbling my way. Between blinks his eyes filled redder and redder, bulging, pouring waterfalls of fluid. His face was a mask of slick gore. "Your failure assures his victory. Now everyone gets to share in Hyrule's fate."

I tried to whisper, _No_ – but all I produced was a cellophane squeak.

Both of my former roommates came at me in no hurry. Stuart still held out his disgusting glass offering. He left a trail of rotting chunks along the floor. His grin was guileless beneath gums gray as cement.

It was as if something snapped_. _After what felt like an eternity, I finally blinked. A deep inhalation brought home the uncanny reek of the approaching creatures. All that blood and pus and corruption. Every nerve in my body shuddered with sick revulsion.

I bolted.

In the corner of my eye, the CNN broadcast was a degenerate kaleidoscope of rolling static and senseless motion. I caught one last glimpse of yellow headlines: DREAD CRUDE DOORWAY BEHEMOTH SLAUGHTER FALLEN MEFF KA wLqG FRAUD FAILUUUAAA XTXdEatHofaLLthiNGS

I drove past the thing that had once been Stuart, the edge of my palm brushing the feverish, gelatinous flesh of his forearm. Through rank twilight and into the baking darkness of the front entry hall. At my back, Allen Eklund gargled, "You fuckeeeerrrrrr! Come back an' join yer homecominnnn' party!"

Barefoot and half-mad, I wrenched open the front door to our apartment. Scorching concrete nipped bitterly at my toes.

I burst into a city howling with hot wind and the stink of raw meat. Only a few cars with shattered windows sat in the parking lot. Traffic lights quivered dead-eyed upon their wires. The scents of trash and salt and superheated iron raced upon the air. Random bits of garbage whipped past in the torrid gale.

The sky bled night-purple and sunset-crimson in nonsensical bands. Wretched figures with green eyes and leather wings flapped against the firmament. Across the long, broken horizon were plumes of smoke big as mountains.

"Grooo . . ."

I chanced a glance behind me, through the still-open apartment door. A pair of pale shadows staggered into the entry hall. Warbling moans preceded them. The sound of disintegrating tracheas.

I ran. The exertion was excruciating, but still I drove my legs into a frenzied sprint. Out into the building's parking lot, where my naked soles avoided broken glass by only the slimmest margin. Over landscaping dry as sand and choked with litter. Across sidewalks run through with cracks and speckled with mummified wads of chewing gum. I ran to the nearest street corner and stopped.

There was no destination in my mind – no plan or purpose. All I knew was that I wanted to flee from that apartment on an almost primal level. I just needed to stop and think. I needed to figure things out. I needed to . . . aw, fuck. I had no idea.

When I looked up, I found a confluence of Los Angeles streets completely devoid of life. No one moved down the sidewalks or behind the cracked facades of the storefronts. No cars trundled through the once-busy roadways. No alarms sounded; no police sirens blared. Only the wind mewled between the sprawling buildings.

Scraps of newspaper whirled through the intersection like frightened swallows. Down a side street, an ambulance was burning slowly into an unrecognizable hulk. Far overhead, something chittered with cold insect purpose.

On no more reason than whim and instinct, I fled west. The snapped, smoldering remains of palm trees crisscrossed my path like sutures. Piles of red, gnawed bones spilled across lawns and driveways. Unseen dogs bayed at my approach with pain and madness in their throats.

Grotesque totems began to grow from back yards. Fetishes elevated upon improvised stilts and poles. Skulls of squirrels and coyotes and children, hastily scraped of flesh with crude tools. Agglomerations of office detritus were pasted into stars and mandalas. Some bore lit candles or were burning outright, their death's-head silhouettes like hungry poes in the gloaming.

I heard the ocean much sooner than I should have.

It felt like I had limped through a labyrinth of suburban atrocity for hours, if not days. Homes and businesses slumped over the streets as if in fits of melancholy. The salt-lick effervescence of the sea hung over the humped pavement thickly.

I came upon the end of the road quite suddenly. Though the street remained straight as an arrow, a rise jumbled with fallen homes screened me from the abrupt end of the city. As the ground climbed, my strides grew shorter and shorter. Once again, I found myself unable to blink. By the time I topped the fissure-banded hillside, I was barely able to breathe either.

Past the crest of the rise, everything simply _stopped_. The street; the neighborhood; the district; the city; the land itself. A jagged cliff dropped from the apex of the hill, as if some unfathomable divine hand had sheered the world in half. Piles of rubble and rusting detritus fell to a rushing, roaring shoreline. Rebar and twisted girders sprang from the cliff-side like steel weeds.

Where Los Angeles ended, the sea began. A tang of coppery mist drifted through the air. From horizon to horizon – from the jigsaw edge of the destroyed city to the hellish corona of the setting sun – stretched a titanic body of water. It was literally wine-dark with waves of scarlet and depths of sinister burgundy. An endless ocean of blood.

There were breakers of cracked asphalt and concrete inlets filled with dark pink foam. Tide pools formed in the trunks of tumble-down cars. Tires floated in the surf like improvised buoys. The skeletons of great buildings rose from the waves like world-ending gravestones.

Beyond it all, the sun fell as an albino-pink eye, rimed with an umber haze.

This was not a land for mortal men. The world had emptied of humanity, and in its place had arrived something as monstrous as it was unknowable. On this blood-dim shore only I remained – last of my people, chained by guilt and doomed by failure. Here, chitinous shades scuttled across black beaches. Oil-dark figures with skin like cloaks toiled in the red surf. Death frolicked here.

The gore-reek of the shattered sea was omnipresent. I would almost certainly never wring it from my clothes and hair. Christ, I could feel it caked in my _teeth_. And between my toes. And under my fingernails.

Sniffing and spitting, I folded up on myself. I sank down and sat upon the edge of the road. My eyes roved far out over the scarlet ocean.

_You are not alone_.

The voice came to me both as a shout and a whisper. Its thin resonation slid like a record needle over the lengths of my bones. I looked up.

_You are not the only one who knows_.

A good distance from where I slumped, a darkling ghost hovered above the breakers. Its black cloak billowed voluminously in the gale howling over the waves. Chain-link patterns of blue and corral rippled around its sleeves. Its cowl was dark as a yawning well-mouth.

It was the Prophet. In its slim and wavering form there was neither male nor female; neither light nor dark; neither good nor evil. It hung in mid-air like a projected illusion.

My eyelids fluttered furiously. The taste of blood rasped about my throat and sinuses. I swallowed painfully and croaked, "This isn't real, is it?"

The Prophet spoke with a voice that was not a voice. Every word produced a shiver. It murmured, _Your powers of denial continue to impress_. _Even now, as the end of all time approaches, you wish to simply wake from your obligation._

The wind that swept from the sea stank of misery. Among the distant leaning towers, I could just make out huge, organic shapes surfacing through the scarlet foam. Their dim backs were bloated with growths like gigantic pustules.

"No. I'm dreaming. None of this makes sense. Hyrule made sense. This is just . . . fear and pain and horror. It's nonsense," I said.

_This is not a dream, _the Prophet intimated. _Not exactly. It's a warning. A vision – perhaps far from metaphorical. A glimpse of the empire of suffering Ganon and his Inner Council wish to erect over Hyrule's raped, flayed corpse._ The cloaked creature spread its unseen arms. _This is the future. This is what will occur if the righteous cannot fulfill the duties set out for them by Fate._

Far out over the sanguinary waters, there resonated a sound of thunder. Black tendrils like poisoned veins began to weave over the horizon.

_Your journey has only just begun, Hero. Soon you will need to decide just what it is that you fight for._

Rancid chasms opened in the sky. A deep, almost purposeful rumbling began to shudder through the hot surface of the asphalt. The cadaverous buildings rising from the sea shook violently. Chunks of stone and glass fell from their facades. The whole world began to crumble.

The Prophet cast its eyeless gaze about as if in mild fascination. At its back, the ocean bellowed. Ever-greater waves of blood broke against the ruined shore.

_There is a secret_.

It placed a pale finger to nonexistent lips.

_There is a secret here_.

I stared, enrapt, as a decrepit skyscraper began to crumble in on itself. Its once-mighty foundations careened into the sea.

The Prophet whispered, _The Tinkerer knows_.

Even the earth succumbed, falling away in rotting red chunks.

_As does the Skull-Child_.

Strips of black cloud like necrotic tissue peeled across the horizon. Vermilion lightning reached down and smashed against the waves.

_As do the Ones Who Passed Beyond_.

Towers of bone rose into the clotted sky.

_In time, you too will know. That is the right and privilege of the Hero. The final truth. That last, beautiful mystery. Seek out the pieces – the clues – the glimpses behind the curtain. Should you fulfill your true purpose, the great and wonderful secret shall at last be yours._

The disintegration of land and sea reached a maddening crescendo. An apocalyptic storm, ripping apart all that remained of this pathetic husk of a world. In all directions, a howling darkness like the wall of a sandstorm approached. I tried to cry out, but the exclamation was snatched away by the wind. Despite the soul-pounding gale smothering the world, I still heard the Prophet's cryptic words.

_You stand on the verge of something magnificent, Linus Olsen_.

A door stood next to me, just a few feet to my right. It had not been there a blink ago. The door was unattached to any building. Its peeling white paint and ragged frame simply rose from the rumbling asphalt like a Dadaist anti-metaphor. Its knob hung loosely, tarnished and forlorn.

My gaze snapped back to the Prophet and the great cataclysm rolling over all of creation. The androgynous figure raised a hand and swept it to the phantasmal door that had so suddenly appeared beside me.

_You need only to reach out and grasp your destiny_.

I shot to my feet. My legs burned with pins and needles. The blood-red ocean was swallowed up by that juggernaut wall of darkness. Every sense rattled. I turned to the door as if approaching a forbidden shrine. My hand flung out. I turned the knob desperately, pressing all of my weight against the splintering wood, and –

[_There was screaming_.]

I drifted down stone steps. My limbs were not my own. On the blue-dim walls were graven images of tentacles, razor-filled mouths, and alien eyes like hatred given physical manifestation. The air was cool and moist. I could hear rivulets of water making their sneaky way through secret places.

A voice whispered hoarsely: _Please – hurry!_

Somewhere in the hushed darkness below the stairs, a constellation of lights twinkled. Ghostly aquas and shimmering greens. Bands of dusky purple. Golden spirals like distant galaxies. About these glittering wisps was a sense of bulk – of mass – of something enormous hidden just beyond view.

There came a wet slithering sound.

Everything fell away and –

[_Everywhere, screaming_.]

I smelled feces and was suddenly standing on the dirt-wracked boards of an outhouse. Veins of light ran between the slats of the poorly mended walls. A broad, old stench ruled like a deathless hierophant. In the rancid gloom, a severed head stared up accusingly. Its black hair was matted down with scabrous blood.

[_Faster now – without pause – without transition – without sense or reason._]

My father smiled gently from a couch the color of creeping fungus. The gaping wound in his skull looked like something exotic placed in a butcher's window. Blood bubbled and foamed at the corners of his lips. I heard my sister screaming.

My palms and fingers brushed past stalks of dry brown grass. The sky was listless, swirling the color of sour milk. Gaunt and spectral trees slumped in the middle distance. Through the still, stagnant air floated oscillating whispers. Voices of children and things that sounded like children conversing furtively as they watched me pass.

On a wind-gray moor, an ancient mansion sagged upon its foundations. In one of its upper windows, a pale figure stared forlornly into a landscape of rain and mist.

Chasms filled with fire cracked the night sky. The moon stretched its red mouth and screamed.

A little girl opened her palm and giggled. She presented me with a blood-drenched human eyeball.

Drums pounded like oracles in the throat of the earth. Far away, there was screaming.

Beneath a screen of leaves and grime, a nude, groaning woman pulled viscera from a gash in her belly.

Thunder drowned the contours of the world and there was screaming.

Upon a red horizon a line of silhouettes twisted and fallow stumbled like drunken puppets.

Children wept and clawed at the leaking sores spreading across their faces.

A wide, shining grin spread like wings in the pitch-dark.

Dogs writhed and whined, biting at the tumors hanging from their bellies like vestigial organs.

Filthy snow fell upon palm trees.

Wind howled in the eaves.

Smoke swirled in my eyes.

Glistening organ meat.

Cornflowers swaying in the sun.

Blood pooling hotly.

Nuggets of marijuana.

Pine needles falling.

Ruby eyes.

Burning flesh.

Mummified faces.

Heavy rain.

Steam.

Bones.

Tangerine.

Cinnamon.

Sunburn.

Golden.

Oh.

[_. . . . . . . . . . . ._]

[_. . . . . ._]

[_. . ._]

There followed something stranger, sweeter, depthless. Not quite describable. I have no idea how long it lasted. Any concept of time or space or consciousness did not apply. Not even the dimmest sentience remained.

Just as all thought and sensation had spiraled into oblivion, the world reasserted itself in slow, discrete layers. First came a sensation of boundaries – of occupying a body, which in turn occupied a set space. Then arrived something distinct: a soft but constant pattering sound.

Air rushed through my nostrils and filled scratchy lungs. I smelled damp stone and linen musty from long disuse. A hint of cedar. My ribs sang with a dull and distant aching.

My first conscious thought was:

_I'm alive_.

It took two or three crusty, exhausted blinks – but I finally opened my eyes. More than a few seconds passed before my bleary, watering eyes could adjust and focus. Though I looked out upon a space so dim it was almost funereal, my pupils stung as if bathed by a floodlight.

The gray-white expanse of a narrow bed stretched before me. Beneath the wrinkled tundra of its blankets lay bumps, folds, and ridges suggestive of a body. _My _body.

Outside the border of the bed was a cramped, gray-green room with walls of bare stone. Directly across from the foot of the bed was a door, set within an arched alcove. To my right, a broad window cross-hatched with iron scrollwork looked out upon a pale and featureless void. Long streamers of water undulated across the outer panes. The hollow pelting sound I had heard apparently belonged to a constant, melancholy barrage of rain. No light pierced the room save the pale, meager glow seeping through this single window.

I sensed movement. Without prompting, my eyes swung themselves out to track it.

A woman sat hunched in a wooden chair, set in the far corner of the room. Her satin-white hands swept in a constant, subtle dance. Needle and thread shone between her long fingers. A circle of cloth – inset with an emerging design – was perched in her lap.

She wore a shapeless work dress and a tight-fitting, almost puritanical habit. The dishwater light purged her of all color but her eyes. They remained stubbornly violet even in the purgatorial twilight.

My breath quickened. It sawed through my chest like sandpaper.

Zelda al-Imzadi.

Perhaps drawn by the sound of my changing inhalations, the Shiekah handmaiden's eyes flicked upward. They met mine with uncomprehending stoniness. Her porcelain features betrayed no emotion whatsoever. Her busy hands slowed, and then stopped. The needle came to rest on the swatch of cloth. Then – a small and almost reluctant smile turned Zelda's lips.

Her voice was a bright, smoky bonfire in the gloom. "Do you truly wake, Mister Olsen?"

My throat quivered and shook with the effort of speaking. It felt like something unnatural – something better left forgotten in a misspent past. I said, "I guess so." My voice sounded like it belonged to an eighty-year-old.

"We were beginning to lose hope," Zelda said. "Some said that you may never wake. You were, after all, very lucky to even be alive."

I croaked, "Where . . . where am I?"

Her words were slow and cool. "Harkinian Keep. You were carried here after the battle. The field hospitals were no place for a man in your condition."

As Zelda spoke, more and more of the world came into focus. I noted the bedside table with its oil lamp, bundles of brown bandages, clay mug, and moisture-dappled pewter pitcher. My body smelled of bitter unguents, pickle-brine herbs, organic grease, and baked-in sweat funk like a forgotten gym locker. A fine moss of itching half-beard covered my face. My belly felt simultaneously swollen and shriveled.

"I'm . . . a mess," I said.

"Truly," Zelda nodded.

I smacked my lips dryly as I asked, "How long . . . have I been asleep?"

The handmaiden frowned. "The better part of eight days," she said. Her voice was suddenly very tired.

"Jesus Christ."

"It is partially understandable." Zelda stood and set the sewing back on her chair. "Would you like some water?"

"Yes. Please."

She crossed the room with only a few long, sure strides. Zelda poured water from the silvery pitcher into a mug and held it toward me. When I started to strain upward, she shook her head and clucked, "Keep still, Mister Olsen. There is no need to exert yourself. You still have much to recover from."

_Getting up _was exerting myself? An ugly whiff of fear breezed through me. Just how fucked up was I?

Zelda gingerly pressed the rim of the mug against my cracked lips. Docile and weak as a newborn, I opened my mouth to drink. Though it hurt to swallow, I swore that that water was the most delicious, refreshing thing I had ever drunk. Cool and sharp and energizing. The flow of it into my belly was almost elementally life-affirming.

When Zelda withdrew the cup from me, I licked my lips and sighed contentedly. She remained standing above me, towering like a marble statue. Her eyes were impenetrable.

I attempted, "You said . . . it was understandable that I slept so long?"

Zelda answered, "Yes. I am told that when the Shiekah Shadow brought you to the Second Legion's medics, you roared and wept from the pain. As such, the apothecaries administered a draught of the Green Illusion."

"Green . . . whatsis?"

"Green Illusion," Zelda sighed. "A potion that blunts pain and . . . summons strange dreams. It was more than necessary, given the surgeries you underwent. Along with vivid hallucinations, it can induce unnaturally lengthy periods of sleep. Unfortunately, I suspect that you would have woken much sooner had you not also developed bog fever after the surgeries. You languished between life and death for some days, I am afraid. Many feared that you would pass."

"Wait," I whispered. "What . . . what surgeries?"

I already knew the answer. I just didn't want it to be true.

Zelda reached down a gloved hand and peeled back the top blanket swaddling my body. She murmured, "Upon your arm, of course."

I allowed my neck to stiffly roll to the left. A resigned sort of dread tingled in my extremities.

The entire left side of my body was encased in a cocoon of rough gauze. Mummifying cross-beams of bandages wrapped about my chest and back. Everything below the massive poultice was smooth and shapeless.

I couldn't feel my left arm. Only the shoulder tingled vaguely – an object glimpsed distantly against a night sky. It was gone.

No amount of steeling myself could have prepared me. I felt tears overflow the edges of my eyes. When I spoke, it took all of my strength to keep my voice from breaking.

"They had to cut my arm off, didn't they?" I blinked irritably at the tears rolling inexorably down my cheeks. "That's . . . that's fine. That's okay. What's done is done. I'll have to deal. That's okay."

Zelda stared in stark surprise. Her features softened and her lips actually rose in a sad, pitying smile. Though she would later deny it, I swore that I saw those hard, gemstone eyes glisten.

"Nay, Mister Olsen. Take heart. The surgeons managed to save your limb. I'm told that it took strong alchemy and some hours of work, but they reset the bones and connected the correct muscles. I only saw the aftermath of those surgeries, but word from the line is that the wound was a frightful mess. In any event, your arm will not be of any use to you for some time . . . but at least it remains attached to your body."

For a moment, I didn't believe her. "I can't feel it. Why can't I feel it?" I whined.

Zelda bent over me, her melancholy smile lingering just a few moments longer. She pressed a finger into my left shoulder. Though I felt the gentle pressure it exerted, the only other sensation it evoked was a mild stinging.

She said, "The Illusion is a targeted elixir. Though it initially stops all pain in the body, it lingers in the flesh where it is injected. I suspect that it will be some days before you feel this arm again. Which is just as well."

She straightened, crossing her arms, and continued, "It is a lucky thing that some of the most skilled surgeons in Hyrule are in legionary service. Luckier still that the Shadow was able to transport you to them in time. The fever set in as you were transported to the Keep. In your condition, the sickness could very well have killed you. As it was, you languished in quite some discomfort. It was quite pitiable to behold."

Only now did the shock and despair of thinking that I had lost an arm dissipate. I settled back into the spongy mattress grudgingly.

"Were you here?" I asked. "The entire time, I mean. Did you . . . did you really take care of me?"

Zelda sighed dramatically. I suspect it took an effort for her not to roll her eyes as well. She said, "I have tended to you as much as I can, Mister Olsen. But not exclusively. Harkinian Keep hosts many injured men of the Legions. I have been quite busy in the days since we parted – organizing the maids and servants for the inevitable onslaught. Others have attended to you as well."

"But it was mostly you."

She looked at me irritably. "Yes," she muttered. "As I said at your departure, it is my duty to attend your needs. Even – and especially – if you were not conscious to communicate them."

The silence that settled between us was so intensely awkward that it was almost a shame to break it. I coughed, "What happened? How'd it all . . . end up?"

As alert as I had become, it was still quite difficult to recall the final moments of the battle. When I tried to pick over those last, blurred minutes, my mind recoiled. Mere consideration was at once painful, confusing, and outright frightening.

Outerlanders, I thought. This whole war is being perpetrated by people I could have passed in the street two weeks ago and never even noticed.

Well. Not _Ganon_, obviously. All the same, the Old Darkness felt far less real than the men (and woman) of the Inner Council. For all their dark, overwhelming presence, those five people were just that – _human_. Ganon was something else entirely. Something to difficult to reconcile with reality.

For her part, Zelda seemed relieved to be speaking of something other than our interpersonal weirdness. "The battle is won. The Royal Legions swept Ganon's army from Kerneghi Gorge. Though . . . not without cost. No one is certain of an exact number – and there are more wounded every day – but it is thought that almost thirteen-thousand Hylians gave their lives that night."

The number meant nothing to me, and yet it shoved an icy spear straight through my core.

The Shiekah woman sashayed stiffly out into the middle of the room, talking as she went. "The remains of the Protectorate army retreated north. Though the Legions were in no shape to pursue immediately, it was thought that we might be able to trap the survivors between a cavalry force and the legions of the Line." With a frustrated chuff, Zelda continued, "Alas, four days ago another major attack struck the defenders at the Faron Bluffs. A surprise push from the Damned Remnant managed to divide the Sixth Legion just long enough for the survivors of Kerneghi to pass back into Protectorate lands. It is thought that nearly twenty-thousand of Ganon's troops managed to escape."

"Goddamn," I spat.

"Aye." Zelda stared angrily out the window, into wisps of rain and fog. "What is more – there are rumors that raiders broke away from the main Protectorate force. Boar- and wolfos-riders again prowl Hylian lands. Though we drove back the offensive, it is a victory in name only. In essence, we stand in exactly the same state we did before the Protectorate cracked the Line."

"Wow," I hissed. "That's a very sunny outlook." I chuckled wryly. "I've got it on good authority that things could have gone much, much worse."

Zelda scooped up her needlework and then dropped heavily into the lonely chair across the room. It took me a moment to recognize the grim look on her face. After all, I don't think that I had ever seen her straight-up sorrowful. She quietly said, "Mister Olsen . . . Linus. I think it is time that I apologize."

"Um. What?"

She shook her head, closed her eyes, and took a determined breath. At last, Zelda managed to say, "It was wrong of me to say those things at the temple. I beg your forgiveness."

For a moment, I couldn't even remember what it was that she had said. Then it all came flooding back – the accusations, the insults, and that final, grinning condemnation.

I nodded emptily and said, "That _was_ some pretty harsh shit. Especially when I was about to go into battle."

Zelda exhaled sharply. "I am aware. And given how subsequent events ran their course, I know now how wrong I was. When I heard the tales of just how the battle was won, I realized my folly."

I waited quietly for her to elaborate.

"It is said that the battle deteriorated rapidly for Hyrule's forces. Setback after setback. General Baeleus even considered falling back into the eastern table-lands.

"Then a scout came bearing news of the Hero. She said that – even though he was separated from his allies and moved alone – he fought valiantly for the people of Hyrule. There were other reports as well. Vague rumors that a man in green armor had clashed with the High Ministers themselves. I hear it said that the men of the Legions heard the news of the Hero's brave struggle and, inspired, gave every bit of their strength to push the invaders back. After a bitter fight, the Protectorate forces broke and ran."

_We're done here, Mayda. The order has been given to fall back._

My heart constricted as if caught in a vice.

Zelda expounded, "Now, I compared many tales as you slept. And despite some incongruities, they all seem to agree – you fought with all your heart in the battle for Kerneghi Gorge. And in that process, you very nearly gave your life for Hyrule."

"So," I smiled, "you've come around at last?"

Zelda scowled. "Do not misunderstand me. You are not the Hero. You _cannot _be the Hero. The very idea of it spits in the face of sense and prophecy. Nor do I believe that Hyrule won the day by your example alone.

"However, Mister Olsen, I no longer believe that you are a coward. Nor an opportunist. I think that you are a very confused – yet brave – man who has stumbled into the middle of a war he does not fully understand. And I admire that you would lay down your life for my people."

I nodded appreciatively. "Guess that's as good as I can expect right now."

"Do you forgive me, then?"

"Shit. Of course. I was being a tool, anyway."

Another reserved smile crossed her face. "I am glad," Zelda said. "Now – do you have any other questions for me? You should rest, given that it is so soon after you have awoken. I should fetch the apothecaries and spread the news."

Other questions? Holy shit – you have no idea!

Wait.

Maybe she did.

"Hey." I licked my lips. Zelda stared at me blankly. "Were you . . . I mean . . . was it . . . were you the . . ."

But I couldn't finish. It was too silly. Too ridiculous to speak aloud. Even if it was backed up by the mythology of my childhood, I couldn't summon the most obvious question still floating through my senseless mind:

_You were there, weren't you? It was you. Are you really _him_?_

Zelda blinked and said, "What are you trying to ask, Mister Olsen?"

"Nothing. Sorry. It's . . . really nothing. Nothing at all."

I was suddenly so tired I couldn't even think, much less move or speak. My surrender to doubt was incredibly enervating. With a voice like a drifting child, I whispered, "What happens next?"

"Many things. You will become quite busy, quite soon. But first, you must recover. It will not be easy."

"But . . ."

"Rest now, Mister Olsen. All other things will come in their time. For now," her voice rolled low and measured as an outgoing tide, "please rest."

So I did.


	48. 48

**48**

The immense doors opened upon a twinkling well of darkness.

Okay, I thought, you can do this. It's not so bad. In fact, it's kind of the opposite. So why am I still scared shitless?

I had been ushered into the narthex by five men – three robed sages-in-training and two legionary guardsmen. All of them had vanished as I waited for the booming shudder of my cue. Now, no one stood at my side. Only I could walk this path. Hideously – gloriously – the steps ahead belonged to no one but me.

So: I adjusted the sling cradling my left arm. I swallowed the acidic nervousness burbling in my throat. I took one last breath as a common man.

And then I strode into the warm, whispering sanctum of the Great Temple of Hylium – ready at last to take hold of my destiny. Over a thousand faces turned to watch my approach.

Ten days had passed since I had woken in the clammy bosom of Harkinian Keep. Ten days by turns blurred and interminable; numb and excruciating. Three of them had passed within the dour confines of the keep, alternately resting languidly and beginning a kind of shake-and-bake program of physical therapy. Four had been spent in befogged travel, lying in the reinforced bunk of a lavish royal carriage as it bumped and rumbled southward. The final three had been a terminally exhausting whirlwind of ceremonial preparation, debriefings, and reacquaintance with the Imperial Palace. Through it all, a constant drizzle had spattered from the sky, summoning mud-slicks and swelling the gutters of the capital.

Part of me was stunned that more than half a month lay between this moment and the Battle of Kerneghi Gorge. In my mind's eye, the greasy smoke of napalm still crouched heavily on my tongue and sinuses. When I closed my eyes at night, it was all too easy to visualize the bright chrome flash of the Iron Knuckle. I had woken more than once in a state of icy panic, the bite of a battle axe still vivid and searing in the blanched darkness. My dreams were a riot of amber irises, great tridents, hale white grins, machetes, and voices like elder machinery.

Nonetheless, events had proceeded with such swift relentlessness that I had almost no time to wallow in self-pity. Each day held a new set of head-twirling wonders – not to mention problems. I had known about the ceremony even before Zelda pressed me through the door of that carriage heading south from Stoneheart. However, it wasn't until I set foot back in Hylium that the crazed _scale _of the thing had been made apparent. When Prime Minister Rauru made it clear just what it was that I would be marching into, three days worth of prep time felt paltry at best. I had slouched toward the day in question (_this _day, I had to remind myself) with a sense of increasingly existential anxiety.

But now . . . _now_. Now I needed to set all that aside.

It was Alvinsday, 6th Koholus – a new month had ticked over since I had arrived in Hyrule. Alvinsday was the second day of rest in the Hylian week and one of official religious observance. To think too deeply on that significance was to court madness.

I walked the central aisle of a formidably immense auditorium. It was a bowl-shaped space, ringed with rising layers of stone benches. High above, the central dome of the Great Temple stared down like the palely banded eye of a hurricane. The aisle sloped gently downward, running in a smooth ramp toward the lowest point of the sanctuary. At the bottom of the bowl – in the exact center of the sanctuary – stood the white disk of a stone dais. My destination. The air was lukewarm and vaguely humid from the rain.

A nearly uncountable crowd was packed end-to-end along the risers. At some point, Zelda had told me that almost fifteen-hundred men, women, and children would be on hand to watch me march down the temple aisle. I hadn't believed her. Now, I wondered if her estimate was actually on the conservative side. Descending rows of dimly lit figures surrounded me on all sides. Assembled here were high-born scions; decorated veterans; finely dressed ladies; fidgeting children in cotton and lace; tightly shrouded zora; bobbing clusters of color-coded fairies; austere and serious sages. There were white-bearded, trembling old men and infants clutched to the breasts of young mothers. Counts, Lords, and merchant kingpins were scattered among them like bright schooners in a drab and dusky harbor.

Every attendee held a lit candle. The auditorium swayed with a gently flickering sea of lights.

For the most part, my walk down the stone slope was accompanied by a breathless quiet. A few children fussed and the most unrepentant of the crowd's gossips exchanged delighted whispers.

Behind me, four heavily armored guardsmen closed the sanctuary doors with a windy _thoom_. It was a stupendously final sort of sound. The kind of noise one associates with the locks engaging on a gas chamber.

Steady on, Linus.

I proceeded. A clean, even walk. Really, I was just trying to focus on not tripping over the dangling hems of the sackcloth robe draped over my coma-thinned body. Uncomfortable penitent's sandals made slapping echoes against the well-trod granite floor. The Master Sword felt awkward as it bumped against my bony hip.

Scattered across the aisle were later-summer flower petals, spicy-smelling sprigs of local herbs, and the slender boughs of darkwood saplings. These last cuttings were apparently important in a number of Hylian rituals. Their notoriously strong branches and purplish, three-strong leaf clusters were considered symbolic of the goddesses' primacy over the natural world.

The Temple itself was a massive, multi-tier structure situated in the otherwise-dreary Sump Deep district of Hylium. Its rose-colored foundations rose from the cramped, foggy avenues of the riverside neighborhood like an indomitable potentate. The shadows of its striated dome and three sky-scraping minarets fell over a landscape of white stucco and cracked slate roofs. From the heights of the Great Temple, one might see ships proceeding down both the Sturm and Dro rivers. Turn eastward and the locks of Lake Hylia loomed. Farther on, the rain-shrouded form of the Imperial Palace wavered like a strange dream.

Within the confines of the Great Temple, the chambers, corridors, and central sanctuary were dank, musty, and just short of gorgeous. Every ceiling was vaulted, and as a result murmurs carried through the structure like busy phantoms. Hundreds of geodesic glass lanterns glowed throughout the hallways. Brilliantly rendered mosaics covered almost every wall. Of these, most depicted fables and religious allegories I couldn't even begin to understand. However, a few gave tilework testament to stories rather more familiar to me. As Zelda and a gaggle of sages had shepherded me into a chamber of ceremonial preparation, I spied scenes that looked an awful lot like Link battling his own shadow, a red ship with a dragon's-head prow, and a blue sword resting in a fern-dappled glade.

Mulling the trip through the temple sent me on a brief reconsideration of that grim little room, its flimsy and completely unnecessary paper privacy screen, and the harried work done to make me ready for the oncoming ordeal.

Half of the prep work had been ceremonial; the other half, logistical. While robed acolytes made certain that I was daubed with special oils and provided a mug of tea similar to the one given to me in Oloro Town, Zelda made sure that I knew every step and spoken word of the event to follow. She quizzed me flatly on my lines – just as she had for days beforehand. Each time I flubbed a cue, her forehead scrunched up in frustration.

As I threaded a procedurally important belt through the loops of my symbolically significant robes, Zelda glared and chuffed, "Are you listening, Mister Olsen? Do you have any conception of how important this ceremony is? Not only for you, but all the people of Hyrule?"

I rolled my eyes. About us, the three young, shaven-headed sages running through the various prayers and anointments shrank back, unsure of whether to interfere.

"Hey. I've got this. You've been putting me through the paces damn near since I woke up. This isn't rocket science."

Ignoring a comparison that she clearly didn't understand, Zelda hissed, "In less than an hour, you will be the subject of a rare and incredibly sacred rite. For your sake – and the sake of all who have put their faith in you – I would suggest that you take this rather more seriously."

"I am! Jesus. I've heard the words in my goddamn sleep for the last two nights. You know that if you keep pushing me like this, I'm going to have a nervous breakdown and forget my lines, right?"

"I have my doubts," she said.

The acolytes all looked like they wanted to crawl under something and hide. I cinched my scabbard as tight as it would go on such a loose garment – something that was much easier imagined than accomplished with only one working hand. The other sat useless as a tree limb in its well-worn sling. I turned to the milling sages-in-training and shot them an irritable look. "You guys need anything else?"

The head acolyte – a kid no older than seventeen – sputtered, "There are yet some prayers that are recommended by custom . . ."

Sighing, I said, "Do we need to do that _right now_?"

"N-nay, sir. We may come back once you are, ah, physically prepared."

"Go on, then," I said. "I'll get back to you when I'm ready."

Dejected, the three young men filed out of the candlelit chamber.

After I had spent another few moments fumbling with my ceremonial clothes, Zelda leaned from the chair she had been lounging in and icily said, "That was quite rude of you, Mister Olsen."

Whatever, I thought.

"It is their duty to guide you through the religious aspects of the ceremony. You may not appreciate the impact of what it is that you will be receiving, but for those three sages it is quite literally a matter of your immortal spirit."

I had to hand it to her – Zelda had certainly followed through on her pledge to continue attending me. In fact, the handmaiden had been an increasingly constant presence at my side. It was a rare moment when she wasn't at least lingering in my shadow. When she didn't directly assist me or tend to my miscellaneous invalid needs, Zelda seemed to spend a good deal of time coolly observing my hobbled progress.

Zelda had taken it upon herself to oversee my physical recovery in the week since I had woken. Despite the gravity of my injuries and the general weakness spurring from eight days spent unconscious, the Shiekah handmaiden launched into a bullheaded campaign of exercises – what could only be described as tough-love physical therapy. A mere day after I had climbed out of my drug-and-illness-fueled coma, Zelda had me up and wobbling on legs that had begun to atrophy from disuse. From there, she had alternated in her ministrations between nurse and drill sergeant, often within the same session.

Though I initially begrudged the maddening hardness of her approach, I couldn't argue with the results. Between her insistence on active recovery and the alchemic wonders of various potions, I would probably make my recovery in a third of the time it would have taken on Earth.

Hell: I probably would have lost my arm if I had taken an axe in some Los Angeles back alley.

The truce that had sprung up between us on that rainy afternoon in Harkinian Keep had been sorely tested in the days since we had arrived back in Hylium. The run-up to the all-important ceremony had been stressful for both of us. Given that the woman was essentially my handler at this point, I could understand on an intellectual level why she had become increasingly brittle and snarky in my presence. Still, the constant sniping had begun to wear awfully thin.

"Yeah yeah yeah," I muttered. "So sorry about that. I'll apologize, okay?"

"It's a matter of respect," Zelda observed. "Or lack thereof. Your demeanor in these proceedings does count for or against you. If you insist upon treating our most hallowed traditions without even the barest modicum of consideration, even your most ardent supporters may begin to doubt you."

I groused, "I get that. All right? I'm just a little tense right now. Real, real ready for this whole thing to be over and done with."

"Hmph! This is to be the greatest day of your life, Mister Olsen. Do you really wish it over with so quickly?"

I cast a skeptical glance her way. "Come on. You know I'm not taking this lightly." Of course she didn't. How could she? After all, Zelda had been coaching me on the gravity of the events to come for days. Surely she must have seen the mix of dread and delight that waltzed in my eyes.

Still struggling to cinch my robe all the way closed, I coughed, "It's just a huge pain in the ass, okay? It's like a wedding. Yeah, it's wonderful and all, but the run-up to the ceremony itself is one long nightmare of stress and ulcers."

One of Zelda's eyebrows arched inquisitively. "Are you married then, Linus Olsen? Did you abandon a long-suffering wife on that foreign world of yours?"

"I – wait – what?" I sputtered. "No. God no. I'm – where would you even get an idea like that?"

"Pity," Zelda said, rolling her eyes a bit. "You sounded so versed in the ways of marriage."

Ah. That dry-ass sense of humor of hers. I wasn't certain that I'd ever get used to it.

Caught up in the sparky atmosphere of the exchange, I blurted, "You know, I've been meaning to ask you something."

Zelda regarded me with half-lidded eyes. "Yes?"

"It's about the guy who saved me at Kerneghi Gorge. The dude you call the 'Shiekah Shadow.' Sheik. What do you know about him?"

Ten days I had been holding this question in. Ten days it had slithered restlessly through me, impetuous as a caged predator. I could scarce believe that I had finally voiced it – now, of all the goddamn times.

The sudden change of subject took all the wind out of the conversation. Crystalline lamps flickered upon high sconces. Red-tinged shadows clung to the cuffs of my bare legs. I had thrown my gaze to the tiled floor in an attempt to act casual, but I suspect the gesture had made the question all the more fraught with implication. When I looked back up, Zelda regarded me flatly, impenetrably. Nothing about her body language had changed.

With a touch of exasperation, the handmaiden said, "I have met him. He has long been a servant of the royal family."

"Who is he really, though? Where does he come from?"

She released a dry little laugh. "Even I do not know that."

Yes you do, I thought – perhaps more than a little bitterly. Of course you do.

I said, "He just seems like your kind of people."

"Not all Shiekah know each other, Mister Olsen. There are quite a few of us," Zelda sighed.

"I just meant that he seemed a lot like you, personality-wise. I thought he might be – I dunno – a cousin or something."

"For all I know, he may be. My mother was never especially forthcoming about the extent of our family."

Cool as a goddamn ice cube. Huh. I began to wonder whether she was actually telling the truth.

Just as I was about to press the issue – probably into territory I wasn't actually prepared to traverse – a series of high, melancholy bells began to chime beyond the cell's timber door. Both Zelda and I leaned to listen. In the passages beyond, their tolling echoed as if in announcement of an afternoon prayer service. Neither of us needed to be told what the lugubrious music foretold.

I felt sweat prickle along the nape of my neck.

"Shit," I muttered.

Zelda stood fully and grimaced. "They toll for you."

"Wow. So very reassuring. You sure I'm not about to be executed?"

Zelda smiled. She did not favor me with that disturbing Predator's Grin. Instead, what emerged was something far stranger – soft, gentle, and somehow very sad. A look of empathy defined.

"Do not fear, Mister Olsen. This is, after all, your hour. You shall not falter."

With a curious sense of foreboding, I followed her to the door – out to the waiting acolytes and their quiet, final prayers – and all that lay beyond.

That brought me back to the present. Those deliberate steps. Those prying eyes. The terror of the moment.

I was much stronger and surer than the days in Harkinian Keep. I was freshly shorn and shaven – my hair so short that I looked like some wandering mendicant. I knew that I was paler and thinner than when I had left Hylium, defying the conventional logic on whether or not such a thing was even possible. The sallow, bone-white line of a scar marred the tip of my nose – one of the souvenirs from my ill-fated battle with the Iron Knuckle. Whenever my left arm was eventually unburdened of its compress and poultices, a rather more dramatic reminder would no doubt be unveiled.

God, but this aisle felt a hundred miles long.

Out among the softly lit sea of faces, I saw a familiar bald pate and push-broom mustache. Dark eyes twinkled from behind a candle gripped in meaty paws. Dressed in the same crisp suit that he had worn to my audience with the King, Tash Lon stared out with a mix of toothy delight and prideful awe.

Ol' Talon. I felt a gummy burst of warmth and confidence at the sight of him. I let my gaze rove openly across his bench, searching for a certain someone that I had been missing these past weeks.

Seated to Tash's right was a woman in a sedate but clearly well-made dress. She had such strikingly red hair and blue eyes that I momentarily mistook her for Malora. Then I saw that she was rather wider of hips and heavier of breast. Crow's feet spread in crinkled shadows from her eyes. The woman's lips were pursed in a restrained smile and a soft sort of exhaustion swam in her expression. I realized that the woman could only be Farah Lon – Tash's wife and Malora's mother.

Ah, but beside her – _right there_ – was someone a bit more familiar to me.

Malora Lon wore a shining white-on-blue gown, its gold-wrapped collar high upon her slender neck. Her garnet-red hair was extravagantly braided. Everything about her was so scrubbed, prepped, and poised that I could scarcely believe that this was the same scuffed, scared girl I had met upon the Eldin Plains.

In the soft light of the candle clutched in her hands, she was fair and freckled and utterly beautiful. At the sight of her I felt happiness and hesitation so deep they were almost primordial.

At Malora's side sat two more red-headed girls – one a slender-faced teenager in an elegant but no-nonsense dress; the other a dark-eyed kid of perhaps ten or eleven, who looked simultaneously bored and energetic. They were obviously of Lon stock. Thus, these must be Malora's sisters, Cremia and Romani. Both eyed me with a kind of wary reverence.

I was almost sad to see that Ingo wasn't seated amidst the family. Almost.

As I briskly passed, all of House Lon's bright faces moved to follow me. A wry grin stretched Tash's lips. I watched as he and his wife curled their hands together in mutual support.

Malora grew a smile so dazzling I felt it in my sternum.

There was no time – no possible opportunity – to linger. The glimpse of the extended Lon clan lasted no more than a few seconds. Tash's genial smile and Malora's wide sapphire eyes were soon at my shoulder – then past.

I stepped closer to the dais. Here, two silent rows of legionary knights in full regalia stood on either side of the aisle. They faced inward, as if in stony judgment of my progress. As I approached, each corresponding pair of armored knights slid their weapons from their scabbards and hoisted them into the air at an angle. Passing among their number I found myself striding beneath a canopy of lances, maces, shudder-inducing battle axes, and finally a glittering arch-work of swords.

Among them was yet another familiar face – just visible beneath the pearlescent helm of his vocation. Sir Walther Kael – scarred and solemn as a weather-beaten idol. At my approach he unslung his bastard sword and thrust it domeward.

I couldn't help it: as I stepped past Walther, I gave him a small, reassuring nod. In his granite eyes was an undeniable storm of melancholy, apprehension, and ironclad purpose. After all that had passed between us, this wasn't the slightest bit surprising.

On one of the days I had spent blearily recuperating at Harkinian Keep, Sir Walther had come to see me. He knocked upon my chamber door very gently for such a big man. My attendant at the time – a handmaiden named Emma – let him in with a good deal of trepidation. After she slipped out to give us privacy, the knight stared down at my pale, prone form with something approaching abject horror in his gray eyes. Without greeting or preamble, Walther bowed stiffly.

"I beg your forgiveness!" he said.

I saw that he bore scabbed-over scrapes along both of his hands. A fading, yellow-rimmed bruise crept from the collar of his uniform tunic and rose like a finger up his neck. There was something improbably hollow and forlorn about his demeanor.

When I answered his request with dumbfounded silence, Walther quickly continued, "Linus Olsen. I have failed in my duty to you. In the hour when you needed me, I was not there to protect you. You almost died as a result."

"Dude . . ." I murmured.

He barreled on, unheeded, "The shame I feel is surely paltry compared to the suffering you have experienced. My honor – such as it was – is truly sullied. I intend to resign my commission as an officer of the Royal Legions and renounce my knighthood. None but those sacrifices will answer for my failure."

I was flabbergasted. At a loss, I asked, "Can you even do that?"

"Aye. There is precedent for situations such as these."

"Hey – I mean –" I stammered uselessly. "This – this isn't right. You don't –"

Walther straightened. His features were as still as if they had been chipped from soapstone. He declared, "I simply wished for you to know that the wrong done to you shall be put to right. In my failure, I . . . I hope that you find a lesson and an example. All luck to you, sir."

He bowed once more, turned on his heel, and marched toward the exit.

Though I was already well into sessions of brutal recovery exercises, it still hurt like a bastard when I tried to scramble out of bed. Growling, I fell back into my pillows like a scarecrow. I croaked, "Wait."

He showed no sign of stopping.

"I said wait, dammit!" I barked.

Sir Walther stopped cold. It was clear that he was debating whether to simply keep walking. His face creaked about for a final glance over his shoulder.

"It wasn't your fault, you melodramatic bastard!" I hissed. Rampant pain and frustration don't really transmute into tact.

"But –" the big knight began.

"It wasn't your fault," I repeated. "I was the one who couldn't keep control of my damned horse. You did your job. All I had to do was not get knocked out of the saddle."

Turning back into the chamber, Walther gruffly said, "Aye – but I should've been lookin' after ya'. Had I not taken off after those wolfos-riders like some green recruit, I might have seen where you went. As it was, I didn't notice you were gone for some minutes. By then, it was too late to look for ya'."

"Fine," I shrugged. "So you're a better soldier than a babysitter. I found out that I can't deflect axes with my mind. It was a learning experience for everybody."

Walther's forehead screwed up in consternation. His scar bunched into a pale serpentine. He said, "The King personally charged me with your safety. In that light, there is no doubt of my failure."

"Jesus, man. You're really obsessed with this, aren't you?"

The knight said nothing.

I threw out my good hand and clucked, "Listen, I get it. You feel guilty about it and nothing I say is going to help that. You're obviously a moody guy." Though Kael grimaced and looked as if he was about to protest, I continued, "I've been doing a lot of thinking since I woke up. Other than the fucking torture Zelda's putting me through, there's not much else to do. I keep going over what happened to me at Kerneghi. I learned more than I thought possible – more than I wanted to, really. And I've come to some conclusions."

Light the color of spun gold poured through the window. In the cramped hallways of the keep, I could hear servants rushing back and forth. Voices of porters and wagon drovers bickered genially in the distant courtyard.

"What I saw out there . . . what I saw, I can't abide. I can't let it go on unanswered. I know now that it's my responsibility to stop Ganon and the atrocities committed by his soldiers." I took a deep, rasping breath. "You've got my word that I will fight that fucker until either I die or he does. I can't do any less.

"You want to make this supposed failure up to me? Don't go through with that resignation crap. I've got a better way."

Sir Walther Kael gazed at me blankly.

"I can't do this without help," I whispered. "I'm gonna need all the training and guidance I can get. And honestly?" I spread my best shit-eating grin. "You're one of the few people in the legions that I can actually stand."

When Walther didn't respond – just stood there staring at me like I had just sprouted a second head – I let any play or sarcasm drain from my voice. I said, "I can't do this without you, man."

He considered this. The big man studied me – this strange, broken-bodied foreigner that had surely warped his life out of all shape and sense. At last, he nodded tentatively.

"Then let that be my new pledge," Walther said. "From here on out, I will assist you in any way I can. I'm still not certain whether or not you are the Hero people claim you to be, Linus." The accent of Walther's birthplace crept cautiously into his voice. "But by all the goddesses, ya' can be certain that you an' I'll bring the fight back to Ganon's armies. We'll make 'em pay for all the lads we lost at Kerneghi."

Beaming, I growled, "Damn straight. We'll kick his porky ass straight back whatever hole he crawled out of."

Sir Walther Kael strode forward then, a pained smile playing at the edges of his lips. Awkward as the movement was, he grasped my right arm below the elbow and shook determinedly. His stone-hard gaze never flinched from mine.

Now, many days later, the same adamant resolve shone on Kael's face like lightning. Though he did not return my nod of acknowledgment, his seemingly unmoving expression communicated his thoughts clear as a cloudless day:

_I'm still here for ya'. Just don't fuck it up_.

And then even he and the knights were behind me, along with much of the audience. Only two more rings of benches stood between me and the raised stone platform of the dais. Upon these pews were gathered the highest and mightiest of Hyrule's ruling class. Beside the bulk of High General Eldridge sat hawk-eyed General Tolskai of the Third Legion. To their left, General Renaldo Baeleus scowled as if he had recently been served a heaping helping of dead rats. Prime Minister Rauru al-Ramarji regarded my descent with eyes as emotionless and metallic as new-forged steel. Swaddled in robes almost as austere as my own, High Sage Saharasla Minos grinned sleepily. His bushy mustache twitched as he executed an awkward wink.

Even the momentousness of the occasion could not hide the peculiar edge to the Generals' expressions. A darkling incredulity surrounded them like a fogbank. After all, I had given them plenty to be skeptical about. Very nearly all of my cards were now on the table.

That, however, is a tale for later.

There were others among this circle of elites – legionary Generals I didn't recognize, officials who I had not met, and noble Lords whose names escaped me. In their finery and resplendence they made my ceremonial garb look like it belonged to a flea-ridden beggar. Nonetheless, (almost) all of their faces were quiet and thoughtful – if not reverential. Even they held their candles with guileless solemnity.

Almost to the center of the sanctuary now. I suppressed a fell shiver. Every gaze scouring my back added some ineffable, ethereal sense of weight to my shoulders.

I glanced right, to the first row of pews. Front and center sat Crown Princess Ilia Harkinian, dour as a junior grim reaper. She looked much the same as the day I had first met her. Her wan, slight form was draped in a very fine, silken cloak and a gown fit for a coronation. Both garments were plum-purple and swirled with inlays of sewn jewels. At the Princess's side was Daia Kiltain – the chubby, green-eyed handmaiden that had accompanied Zelda the first time I had ever seen them.

It was difficult to parse the look Ilia gave me as I passed. Part anger; part resentment; part bitter, deeply grudging respect. The adolescent girl nodded morosely to me.

I couldn't decide whether it was a comfort or a curse that I could not see Zelda among the audience. After remanding me to the care of the temple sages, she surely must have slipped out into the auditorium. She certainly did not sit in the front row, at the Princess's side.

I wondered if she had decided to forgo the whole affair entirely.

I wasn't sure how I felt about that possibility.

Suddenly, I stood at the foot of the blunt mesa of the central dais. A few short, perfunctory stairs led up onto its smooth, white surface. Gently glowing braziers spread a reddish-orange glow across its breadth.

When I had first been told about this hullabaloo, I had imagined it would entail a whole procession of sages and high military mucky-mucks. By now, I knew well that there would be only one officiate on that dais.

A single towering figure waited for me on the stone platform. King Daphnes Harkinian stood at the very center of the sanctuary: upright, serene, and – despite his beneficent smile – intimidating as a frost giant. He wore robes that were opulent cousins to my own – of the same make and style, but of materials far finer and colors far richer. Deep purple folds covered his broad chest and a sash of brilliant gold was snug about his waist. Atop the King's head perched the same Triforce-adorned circlet he had worn during that first, fateful audience.

I stopped at the foot of the stairs. A hush deeper than silence spread through the sanctuary. I stared up at Harkinian with eyes like dusty marbles. My breath hitched feistily in my raw, sore chest.

The High King of Hyrule raised a hand. He swept it across his audience. A shadow like the spar of mighty ship swept through the ember-colored light.

He spoke the first, familiar words of the ceremony. Due to some miraculous – and perhaps alchemic – feat of engineering, his words echoed throughout the titanic auditorium as if from hidden loudspeakers.

"Who is this that steps into my presence and the exalted presence of the Three?"

Oh shit. Oh _balls_. This is _happening_.

I answered just as Zelda had coached me: "I come to you as Linus Aaron Olsen, your majesty. Son of Edmund John Olsen – born of the Outer Lands."

"Do you come to me this day as a warrior, Linus Olsen?" the King boomed.

This next part had been congenitally tough for me to memorize. I felt my ears burn as I initially stumbled over the words.

"I am a – I mean." Argh. Keep going. "I come to you this day, majesty, as, uh, a servant of Hyrule. I come as one penitent. I come to you as a pilgrim and a friend."

The King rumbled, "Do you approach with humility in your heart?"

You have no fucking clue, dude.

I mechanically said, "I am humbled by this day, by my duty, and by the goddesses' favor – your majesty."

Harkinian nodded somberly and pronounced, "Come then, o warrior, and kneel before me."

I mounted the steps to the dais. Not too quickly – not too eagerly. The point was contrition and self-effacement. I kept my eyes on my toes as I ascended the steps, counting each one as it went beneath my feet. After the fifth, I found myself on the bare rock of that hallowed platform. Without raising my eyes, I fell to one knee.

My entire world became a smooth plane of banded marble. The King's voice filled that world, becoming the rushing windstorm upon the flatlands.

"Will you pray with me, sir?"

"I will, your majesty."

I heard the King's steps as he pivoted to his audience. Though I did not see it, I knew that he was raising his arms to the high dome in heavenly supplication. Upon the plain descended a susurrus of whispers.

"In the name of the Three – for some Who Are One – I welcome you all. Join your voices in greeting and thanksgiving. On this day we pay honor to one who has defended our kingdom nearly at the cost of his own life."

Harkinian's voice was a righteous thunder. "I invoke you, o blessed mothers – o revered sisters. Din, fierce and powerful. Farore, clever and brave. Nayru, wise and loving. In your names, I consecrate this most holy of rites. We beseech you – look upon this joyous day and grant your servants favor. In this darkest of eras, you have seen fit to send us a ray of light. On this day we honor him in the embodiment of your virtues. On this day, we embrace one who was born an outsider into the folds of your chosen people.

"Rejoice now, o goddesses. Rejoice in the strength of your people and your chosen Hero. Goddesses praised."

All gathered combined into a single, prodigious sigh. "GODDESSES PRAISED."

Hands by the hundred traced the sign of the Triforce. My own followed suit uncertainly, still not used to the religious gesture.

With the invocation out of the way, we dove into the meat of the thing. The King turned his attention back to me. "Linus Olsen," he asked, "on this day, what is it that you seek?"

"I seek to better serve you, majesty, and the entirety of your kingdom."

Voices muttered in the audience like the distant burbling of pigeons.

"How is it that you wish to serve?" Harkinian asked.

"With my hands and my heart, majesty. With my sword and soul."

"Do you offer me your sword, sir?"

I echoed hollowly, "I do offer you my sword, your majesty."

"Unsheathe it then, o warrior, so that I might judge its worth."

I had become used to performing most motions one-handed. Nonetheless, pulling the Master Sword from its scabbard felt unbelievably awkward. Under three-thousand probing eyes, I felt like a bumbling moron as I worked the blade out. The sound of the sword's slick passage whipped about the sanctuary like a live thing. It was with a trembling hand that I held the Sword of Darshan out to the King.

I focused only on the cool marble and the tips of the King's boots, but I knew that Harkinian now held the Master Sword aloft – one hand about the hilt, the other resting beneath its blade.

"With this sword, do you offer me your service?"

"I do offer you my service, your majesty."

Our words chased one another through candle-flickering twilight.

"Do you pledge your life to me and to the kingdom of Hyrule – come every foe and every disaster – until death or dishonor?"

"I do pledge so, your majesty."

"Then look upon me, Linus Olsen."

Such a simple gesture felt so . . . _momentous_. I tilted my head and my gaze climbed over the purple and coal and gilt of the King's overwhelming height. He loomed above me like a titan, sword held outstretched like a sacred offering.

His eyes were so very, very blue – even in the molten light. They grabbed mine and held them fast. A look so dark and penetrating I felt as if the man were opening me up to read the creases upon my soul. His scarred lips were taut and bloodless.

There was such iron in this man. Such determination. Such a long and saturating sadness.

_You are the last of our hopes_, he seemed to say.

We stared into one another for what felt like long, murmur-laden minutes. It was, of course, only a matter of seconds. Daphnes Harkinian's irises flicked back to the thousand faces taking us in. His grim expression slid into a knowing smile. His deep, measured, stumbling voice called out:

"I raise this sword in the name of my father – High King Ellas the Stoic. And his father, High King Davos the Learned. And his mother, High Queen Elsa the Redeemer. I raise this sword's wielder in the name of King Alvin, the First and the Uniter. I raise this warrior upon high in the name of the Kingdom of Hyrule and all its peoples. I raise this humble servant in the name of Din and Nayru and Farore.

"Linus Olsen. In honor of your esteemed service, great labor, honorable humility, and valor upon the field of battle – I, High King Daphnes of House Harkinian, do bestow upon you the rank of Knight Ascendant. I confer upon you the commission of Captain of the First Legion of Hyrule. And . . ." the King raised the horizontal sword high over his head and mine. He turned slowly, deliberately, sweeping his countenance upon all gathered.

"And most of all, I do state and affirm your _true _title. From this day forth, let no man doubt that you are the chosen warrior of the goddesses. Let none say that you are not the Link to the Triforce!"

Though it wasn't called for, a good portion of the crowd broke into riotous applause. The movers and shakers of Hyrule cried out in exultation. Grinning gently, the King allowed the raucous outburst to subside on its own.

As he did, a sly and venomous voice pronounced: You're not worthy of this. You didn't win shit! Ganon retreated on purpose. Your own people mutilated you and left you for dead. You're more of a fraud now than you ever were.

Ah, my very own inner bastard. The incessant, scratching hideousness of my doubt. It was far too late for it to play any role in the proceedings. All the same, it continued to chatter in that far-off cell of inner darkness.

When the audience had calmed itself, the King said, "Rise, o warrior. Rise and be greeted as my cherished brother. Rise and stand tall in the sight of the goddesses as a true Knight of the Royal Legions."

I was honestly surprised when I did not shake as I stood. King Harkinian closed the gap between us. Suddenly he was so close I could smell the hints of raw ginger on his robes and cloves upon his breath. He held the Master Sword out, and then switched it into one able hand.

With exacting care, the King slid the Master Sword into the scabbard at my side. A smooth, seamless, almost paternal motion. Then he placed a sinewy hand upon each of my shoulders. His gaze – though very happy now – held my own with that same melancholy, inescapable power. The King of Hyrule turned me about to face the surrounding audience, hands still resting upon my shoulder blades.

There was an interminable moment of fathomless silence.

In that fraction of a second, I finally saw her. Zelda. Or so I thought – in one of the upper reaches of the auditorium, a pair of amethyst-purple eyes shone from behind a candle's meager flame. It seemed to me that they watched me with an expression of grave concern – bordering on despair. Zelda al-Imzadi took me in as one might watch a prisoner wrongly condemned to the gallows.

I had no time to let the dread hollowness of that look sink in.

Daphnes Harkinian proclaimed, "I present to you Sir Linus Olsen the Link! The Hero of the Goddesses! A savior for these dark times!"

A tornado of raised voices. A detonation of applause. All that could stand did so. I was buffeted by ecstatic celebration.

"LONG LIVE THE HERO!"

"GODDESSES PRAISED!"

"LONG LIVE HYRULE! EVER MAY SHE PROSPER!"

"GLORY TO THE LINK!"

And, disconcertingly:

"DEATH TO GANON! DEATH TO THE PROTECTORATE"

Before me stretched not only the roaring crowd, but a responsibility as big as the world and very nearly as complicated. Though I had redoubled my resolve and declared my intention to see it all through, I knew in my heart of hearts that I was probably not the right man for the job. I might declare that I was the Hero with more confidence each time I said it – but a major part of me was certain that it was not true. A sneaking, eel-slippery voice that whispered, _How can it be a loser like you_?

Despite all of this, I knew now that – for better or worse – this was my role to play. This was the new trajectory of my life. This was – inevitably and implacably – the blinding scope of my destiny.

I stood before them all triumphant, resplendent, absolute.

Sir Linus Aaron Olsen – Knight Ascendant of Hyrule.

The Hero of Legend. Champion of the Goddesses. The Link to the Triforce.

_End of Part Two_


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